Банда «Ключ на обезьяну» Эдварда Эбби

Novel by Edward Abbey

The Monkey Wrench Gang is a novel written by American author Edward Abbey (1927–1989), published in 1975. Abbey's most famous work of fiction, the novel concerns the use of sabotage to protest environmentally damaging activities in the Southwestern United States, and was so influential that the term "monkeywrench," often used as a verb, has come to mean, besides sabotage and damage to machines, any sabotage, activism, law making, or law breaking to preserve wilderness, wild spaces and ecosystems. In 1985, Dream Garden Press released a special 10th Anniversary edition of the book featuring illustrations by R. Crumb, plus a chapter titled "Seldom Seen at Home" that had been deleted from the original edition. Crumb's illustrations were used for a limited edition calendar based on the book. The most recent edition was released in 2006 by Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

The book's four main characters are ecologically minded misfits—"Seldom Seen" Smith, a Jack Mormon river guide; Doc Sarvis, an odd but wealthy and wise surgeon; Bonnie Abbzug, his young Jewish feminist assistant; and a rather eccentric Green Beret Vietnam veteran, George Hayduke. Together, although not always working as a tightly knit team, they form the titular group dedicated to the destruction of what they see as the system that pollutes and destroys their environment, the American West. As the gang's attacks on deserted bulldozers and trains continue, the law closes in. For the gang, the enemy is those who would develop the American Southwest—despoiling the land, befouling the air, and destroying nature and the sacred purity of Abbey's desert world. Their greatest hatred is focused on the Glen Canyon Dam, a monolithic edifice of concrete that the monkey wrenchers seek to destroy because it dams a beautiful wild river.

From the National Observer, "A sad, hilarious, exuberant, vulgar fairy tale It'll make you want to go out and blow up a dam." From The New York Times, "Since the publication of his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang last September, Mr. Abbey, a 48 year old native of a rural town in Pennsylvania, has become an underground cult hero throughout the West among students, environmentalists and would‐be 'eco‐raiders.'" From The Washington Post, "One of the best writers to deal with the American West." From the Houston Chronicle, "What a thing of beauty is Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang."

Hayduke Lives! continues the story from where The Monkey Wrench Gang left off.

A film adaptation of the book, written and directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, has long been in pre production. Neil Young is set to score the film, and Open Road Films is its distributor in the United States. The film rights holders for the book filed suit against the producers of Night Moves, charging that the film's plot is significantly similar to that of the book.