The Laughing Monsters is a spy novel by Denis Johnson published in 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The Laughing Monsters is set largely in the African countries of Sierra Leone, Congo and Uganda in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s, conflicts which Johnson witnessed and reported on as a journalist. The title of the novel is a reference to the Happy Mountains of the Congo, where the novel's climax takes place. The mountain range was dubbed the Laughing Monsters by the 19th Century missionary James Hannington. The title also characterizes the two chief protagonists of the novel. Source: Wikipedia (en)