Blood River
A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart
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4.3 • 14 Ratings
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
**THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**
A compulsively readable account of an African country now virtually inaccessible to the outside world and one journalist's daring and adventurous journey.
When war correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to cover Africa in 2000 he quickly became obsessed with the idea of recreating H.M. Stanley's famous nineteenth century trans-Africa expedition - but travelling alone.
Despite warnings that his plan was 'suicidal', Butcher set out for the Congo's eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots. Making his way in an assortment of vessels including a motorbike and a dugout canoe, helped along by a cast of unlikely characters, he followed in the footsteps of the great Victorian adventurers.
Butcher's journey was a remarkable feat, but the story of the Congo, told expertly and vividly in this book, is more remarkable still.
‘A masterpiece’ John Le Carré
‘Extraordinary, audacious, completely enthralling’ William Boyd
‘A remarkable marriage of travelogue and history, which deserves to make Tim Butcher a star for his prose, as well as his courage’ Max Hastings
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"For me terror manifests itself through clear physical symptoms, an ache that grows behind my knees and a choking dryness in my throat," writes British journalist Butcher in the preface of this devastating yet strangely exhilarating account of his six-week ordeal retracing the steps of 19th-century explorer H.M. Stanley's Victorian-era travels through the present-day hell that is the Republic of Congo. Setting out into the war-torn, disease-infested backcountry of Congo in 2000 against the wishes of just about everyone in his life family, friends, editors and a wild assortment of government officials (the corrupt and the more corrupt) Butcher quickly finds more horror than he'd previously experienced in his 10 years as a war correspondent ("With my own eyes I had peered into a hidden African world where human bones too numerous to bury were left lying on the ground"). His tale is chock-a-block with gruesome details about the brutal Belgian rule of the late 19th century as well as the casual disregard for life on the contemporary scene. Part travelogue, part straight-forward reportage, Butcher's story is a full-throated lament for large-scale human potential wasted with no reasonable end in sight.
