Best of Book History Online

Product Details

From 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. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Kira Salak Even seasoned war correspondents balk at the thought of being sent to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Few places offer such a smorgasbord of danger: rape, massacre, genocide, cannibalism. War ravages eastern Congo, and only the most hard-core aid organizations operate in the interior. This grim setting is the backdrop for British journalist Tim Butcher's travelogue cum history, Blood River. Ostensibly, Butcher traveled to the Congo to retrace the route of explorer Henry Stanley, the first Westerner to chart the Congo River, in 1877. "I wanted to do . . . something that had not been done for decades," he explains, "to draw together the Congo's fractious whole by travelling Stanley's 3,000-kilometer route from one side to the other." Yet Blood River is less an adventure tale than a journalistic investigation of what has gone wrong in the Congo, and why. "Congo stands as a totem for the failed continent of Africa," writes Butcher, a correspondent for London's Daily Telegraph. "It has more potential than any other African nation. . . . But it is exactly this sense of what might be that makes the Congo's failure all the more acute." Butcher's trip was treacherous, though he enlisted aid workers and missionaries to help him. Along the way, he encountered ragtag villages where starving locals had fled from marauding militias; bleached bones littered the jungle. People constantly warned him not to continue. "This is a terrible place where terrible things happen," a Congolese priest told him upon his arrival in the decrepit, war-torn town of Ubundu. Yet Butcher plodded on, and the only violence that befell him was an attack by army ants. As he recounts the journey, Butcher takes on the role of archaeologist, sifting through Congo's shady present to unearth vestiges of the nation's former promise. In 1885, Belgian's King Leopold II declared himself owner of nearly a million square miles in central Africa. The Belgians quickly exploited the region's natural resources, particularly rubber, using the natives as forced laborers to create one of Africa's wealthiest colonies. After the Congo gained independence in 1960, corruption and despotism sent it reeling into a civil war that took more than 5 million lives -- the worst toll in an armed conflict since World War II. Butcher's discoveries paint a poignant picture of Congo's lost hope and prosperity: "I took a few steps and felt my right boot clunk into something unnaturally hard and angular on the floor. I dug my heel into the leaf mulch and felt it again. Scraping down through the detritus, I slowly cleared away enough soil to get a good look. It was a cast-iron railway sleeper, perfectly preserved and still connected to a piece of track." Butcher constantly juxtaposes present and past realities, giving his narrative the surreal feel of time travel. His journey is complemented by quotations from Stanley's travel narrative, Through the Dark Continent, published in 1878, and by numerous interviews he conducted with local people, including Congolese mayors and Greek expats. Butcher's breadth of knowledge is both impressive and eclectic. We learn the technique of making cassava flour and the origins of Congolese Primus beer. What we don't learn about, however, is Butcher's own, inner experience. "The reader of a good travel book is entitled not only to an exterior voyage . . . but to an interior, a sentimental, or temperamental voyage," wrote travel writer and novelist Norman Douglas. Blood River succeeds admirably as reportage, but not as essay. If the author comes to any personal revelations by the end of his grueling trip, we're not privy to them; the result is disappointingly one-dimensional. Readers must decide what they want from a travel book, and whether this one's thorough interweaving of history, geography and politics makes up for its lack of introspection.
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
A journalist for the UK’s Daily Telegraph, Butcher undertook a hazardous African trip in 2004, traveling from Lake Tanganyika to the Atlantic Ocean via the Congo River. And he did not travel via foreigners’ usual conveyance in Africa—aircraft—but overland by motorbike, dugout canoe, and UN patrol boat. This account of his six-week-long journey proves to be an exceptionally gripping example of travel writing, not only because of its roster of obstacles surmounted by the resourceful traveler but also because of its empathy for those who assisted Butcher in passing through the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Encountering ordinary Congolese, staff of the UN and humanitarian agencies, and elderly holdovers from the Belgian colonial era, Butcher catches their life stories as he recounts the historical waypoints (such as Henry Stanley’s 1874–77 exploration, whose route Butcher followed) in Congo’s connection to and postcolonial detachment from the modern world, symbolized in dilapidated sights such as crumbling post offices and hulks of river boats. Depicting the country’s dire physical plight and lawless corruption, Butcher delivers an unblinking firsthand portrait of contemporary Congo. --Gilbert Taylor

Customer Reviews

A disturbing trek across a nation that has collapsed
Tim Butcher decided to follow the footsteps of the explorer Henry Stanley across the Congo. The most dangerous part of his journey was by motorbike from Kalemie to Kisangani, where he acknowledges he was incredibly lucky in not being attacked by Mai-Mai rebels. He uses the country's Voie Nationale (National Route), which due to lack of maintenance, can't be traversed by anything heavier than a light motorbike, which then must be manhandled over fallen trees. At one point, he encounters a village where the children have never even seen a motor vehicle, although the older generation have told their children stories of trucks and buses. The author marvels that this is probably the only place on earth where the young have experienced less technology than their elders. The remainder of his trip was by river boat (with some exceptions), and is anticlimactic compared with the earlier overland segment.

Tim Butcher repeatedly slathers praise on the moral integrity and work ethic of the Congolese who help him. But the question arises in every chapter: Why is the Congo such a basket case? Butcher says it is because of the legacy of colonialism, but this argument wears thin after a half-century during which other ex-colonies have coped better with the challenges of nation-building. In even the worst-governed countries, it's still possible to drive a jeep on their main highway, but not in the Congo.

It is fashionable to blame everything on the Belgians, but this book reminds us that the Belgians created a network of well-maintained roads, riverboats, and railroads, and also maintained the rule of law, albeit undemocratic and overtly racist. Yet the post-independence regimes have engaged in atrocities and have allowed the infrastructure to decay. Under the Belgians, the trains ran on time; now they don't run at all.

This is a superb and unforgettable book, but I suggest skipping the earliest portion, where he covers Congo history and his own preparations. Dive into Chapter 3, where the adventure begins.

An Incredible Journey
The subject matter of this book and the journey that Mr. Butcher took on was incredible. I am not sure it was the best decision as the risks were extreme but it made for an intriguing journey that sheds light on the atrocities that have ravaged the area.
The book is a good read but the ending is somewhat lacking. I wasn't looking for a dramatic ending as it was non-fiction but I felt that the author could have tied his themes together and wrapped up his thoughts better. The book is fantastic and Mr. Butcher should be commended for taking on such an awesome journey so that his audience can re-live his experiences vicariously through his writing.

An imperfect but informative travelogue
Tim Butcher was sent to Africa as a foreign correspondent for The Telegraph in 2000. While exploring the continent, he dreamt of traveling along the whole length of the Congo River from its source to the sea, recreating the latter portion of Stanley's famous traversal of Africa. In 2004 he succeeded, and BLOOD RIVER is his chronicle of the trip.

As the book opens, Butcher has arrived in Kalemie, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, which forms a border between Congo and Tanzania. His first challenge is going a thousand kilometers overland to the beginnings of the river, a feat that everyone he meets calls madness, for the overland route has been closed for years. To avoid a territory marauded by rebels, foreign charities and the UN had relied entirely on airplanes. Once he reaches the river, Butcher then must endeavour to find transportation downstream, difficult when the river has mainly been abandoned as a way of going long distances. Butcher's trip was in some way a failure, as wracked by fever and weakness he did the last 600 kilometers by helicopter, but his vivid account of how wild and filthy the Congo has become makes the reader sympathetic. Certainly Stanley's achievement seems all the more impressive.

Interspersed with the account of his trip, Butcher relates many tales about the history of the Congo, which came as a great surprise to this reader who knew the Congo only as a failed state, suffering under the madman Mobuntu and the two dictators who succeeded him. Butcher shows how the Belgians had overseen heavy development in the Congo, with roads and railways connecting the major cities of the country, and stately towns with solid buildings and clinics. Nearly all of this had crumbled to dust or had been reclaimed by the jungle in the 44 years between independence and Butcher's trip. The state of life in the Congo today is grim, with settlements being squalid and the bush a frequent refuge when violence breaks out.

BLOOD RIVER is an easy read and its 362 pages can be knocked off in just a few hours. I'm very happy to have read it, as it has spurred me on to further reading about the terrible decline of the Congo from healthy and developed (though cruel) colony to almost complete savagery. It's not a perfect travelogue, as some of his themes in the book can be repetitive, and it's a pity he didn't report on any of the cultural life of the people he meant (but in a 44-day stint there wasn't too much time to investigate). Nonetheless, I would generally recommend it.