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Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart (Vintage books) (Paperback)
Short Description for Blood RiverThe author set out for the Congo's eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots with the idea of recreating H M Stanley's famous expedition. This book tells of the author's journey and the story of Congo; as he made his way in an assortment of vessels including a motorbike and a dugout canoe.
Full description- Publisher: VINTAGE
- Published: 03 January 2008
- Format: Paperback 384 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: Travel Writing
- ISBN 13: 9780099494287 ISBN 10: 0099494280
- Sales rank: 9,219
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Reviews for Blood River
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Place Without a Postcard
Tim Butcher makes a perilous journey into the heart of Africa and finds it broken.
The former Daily Telegraph scribe became fascinated by H.M Stanley's crossing of the middle of Africa in 1874 and made an audacious decision to attempt to retrace Stanley's epic journey, carrying with him little more than a packet of baby-wipes and a penknife.
In doing so, he encounters a destroyed country he memorably describes as being in a state of 'undeveloping' as opposed to being undeveloped. During the journey he loses nearly a stone in weight and is often disorientated, sick and sometimes barely concious.
Butcher's evocation of the decay of the infrastructure built during the Belgian period, is both harrowing and compelling.
His prose is economic and lacks the emotion of Paul Therox, yet his power of observation is acute and engaging. His empathy for the people he encounters in this wrecked country, as they desperately try to cling to what remains of the old order as an antidote to the chaos and tragedy that surrounds them, is intense and moving. In one instance he recounts meeting a railway station master who diligently attends his station every day even though no train has passed in years. In Kisangani, he describes the market traders who await tourists who will never arrive.
Butcher's odyssey begins in Lake Tanganyika. He moves rapidly, riding pillion on a motorbike, through a lush and steamy landscape destroyed by war, disease and poverty, always trying to stay one step ahead of the ever present Mai Mai gunmen.
Eventually he reaches Kasongo, once described as an African version of the lost city of Atlantis, but now virtually unrecognisable as the place once visited by Evelyn Waugh in the 1950's, its buildings empty shells slowly being overtaken by the surrounding jungle. After a brief pause here, he attempts a descent of the Congo River in a traditional dugout canoe.
In truth, there is possibly little difference between the Congo encountered by Stanley in the late Nineteenth Century compared with that experienced by Butcher. The development of the Belgian colonial period, which also came at horrendous cost to the Congolese people, appears as but a blimp on a timeline that is dominated by darkness and chaos. The empty and blackening shells of its colonial period structures crumble as the graves of those who built them are are rendered invisible by the dripping vegetation.
Tim Butcher's, Blood River will not appeal to the bleeding hearts whom Paul Therox describes as the Afromantics and the Mandela sniffers, nor can I imagine the reader completing the book and feeling compelled to call their travel agent and book a ticket to Kinshasa, but the author has written a gripping and raw portrait of this terminally damaged place and in doing so has given us an African travel classic. by Christopher Rimmer
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