A Training School for Elephants

by Sophy Roberts

Overview

Out of a sidelined, colonial-era expedition in Africa comes a new history of cruelty, deception and adventure from the acclaimed author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia

In 1879, King Leopold II of Belgium launched an ambitious plan to plunder Africa’s resources. The key to cracking open the continent, or so he thought, was its elephants—if only he could train them. And so he commissioned the charismatic Irish adventurer Frederick Carter to ship four tamed Asian elephants from India to the East African coast, where they were marched inland towards Congo. The ultimate aim was to establish a training school for African elephants.

Following in the footsteps of the four elephants, Roberts pieces together the story of this long-forgotten expedition, in travels that take her to Belgium, Iraq, India, Tanzania, and Congo. The storytelling brings to life a compelling cast of historic characters and modern voices, from ivory dealers to Catholic nuns, set against rich descriptions of the landscapes travelled. In an original weave of past and present, she digs deep into historic records revealing an extraordinary—and enduring—story of colonial greed, hypocrisy, and folly.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802164865
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	04/22/2025
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.70(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Sophy Roberts is a British writer whose work focuses on the wild places from Papua New Guinea to the Congo. Her first book was The Lost Pianos of Siberia. She began her career assisting the writer Jessica Mitford, and trained in journalism at Columbia University. She regularly contributes to the Financial Times and Conde Nast Traveler.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for A Training School for Elephants:

“Luminous… Reflective, watchful, calm, Roberts is such a vivid travel writer that you forget what a brilliant historian she is. She has the water-diviner’s gift for stories in unlikely places. And then, through research in archives as well as on the ground, for uncovering sparky details that bring the story to life. Her conversations with everyone she meets, from hospitable nuns to a chief in a red fez, who pores over the original expedition maps with her at a Chinese restaurant in Dodoma, give her narrative a glow of sympathetic charm.”—The Guardian

“This is a marvelous book, an important footnote to history - of Sophy Roberts’ intrepid travel with a real purpose, shining a light on colonialism, Belgian and British, and their peculiar obsessions, in this case elephants, beloved creatures also colonized and exploited.” —Paul Theroux

“Masterfully weaving adventure, intrigue and the darker truths of colonial ambition into a story as gripping as it is eye opening.”—Levison Wood

“A superb, thoughtful quest into the heart of Africa.”—Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment

“A cautionary tale from the early days of the Scramble for Africa, but poignant and scholarly too. Roberts writes beautifully.”—Thomas Pakenham, author of The Scramble for Africa

“Deeply-researched. Brings to life a bizarre and long-forgotten story of Africa with empathy, intriguing encounters and memorable characters, not least the elephants themselves.”—Luke Pepera, author of Motherland: A Journey through 500,000 Years of African Culture and Identity

“Sophy Roberts brings history to life, tackling difficult, sensitive subjects with careful, exquisite prose. Unputdownable.”—Mary Harper, author of Getting Somalia Wrong?

“A rich, engrossing tapestry of greed and disregard for life, human and animal, that stretches across continents, and across time, from the late nineteenth century to this day. Few write as compellingly as Roberts, this is her as only she can write.”—Amal Chatterjee, author of Across the Lakes

“An incredible and illuminating tale, wonderfully told, as ever.”—Ben Rawlence, author of Radio Congo

Praise for Sophy Roberts:

“A modern-day Freya Stark.”—Tatler

“Roberts' writing is beguiling.”—The i

“Roberts is a wonderfully lyrical writer.”—Observer

“An author of courage, patience, erudition, and a sympathetic imagination.”—Dervla Murphy

Praise for The Lost Pianos of Siberia:

“An extraordinary encounter with a wildly fascinating and astonishingly ill-known region . . . This is a wonderful book.”—Sunday Times

“The ultimate quest for the oddest objects - pianos - in the most unlikely place - Siberia. But Roberts makes it much more than that, an elegant and nuanced journey through literature, through history, through music, murder and incarceration and revolution, through snow and ice and remoteness, to discover the human face of Siberia. I loved this book.”—Paul Theroux

“An impressive exploration of Siberia's terrifying past.”—Guardian

“An exuberant, eccentric journey through Russian vastness, European history and Russian culture, The Lost Pianos of Siberia is a quixotic quest, a picaresque travel adventure and a strange forgotten story, all wrapped into one fascinating book.”—Simon Sebag-Montefiore

“What shines through in this book is Roberts' genuine, humane affection for and fascination with the people she meets in Siberia.”—Literary Review

From the Publisher

2025-02-01
Going deep into Africa.

By the end of 1875, King Leopold of Belgium, like many other Europeans, had become interested in the African Congo and its natural resources. In addition to the formal International African Association, whose mission was to “civilize” Africa, Leopold organized a shadow effort led by Henry Morton Stanley—the reporter who had “famously tracked down Livingston.” For a very public expedition, Leopold hired an Irishman, Frederick Falkner Carter, to lead from Dar es Salaam to Lake Tanganyika a caravan that included four trained Indian elephants and their mahouts, or trainers. Carter’s mission was twofold: to determine the feasibility of using elephants as transport across challenging terrain and to establish the foundation of a training school for African elephants. The ensuing journey saw the deaths of the overworked, undernourished elephants along with multiple missteps and abuses. Roberts, a British journalist and writer, excavates this story from archives across Europe and Africa while retracing Carter’s route, believing that “[t]he path the elephants took would be my passport into a region’s oral memory.” Roberts’ journey results in a broader story as she observes the continued political and environmental impacts of colonialism while discovering more context for Carter’s trip. In spite of Roberts’ interrogation of colonialism, her thoughtful approach to geographic and ethnic group naming, and her critical account of Carter’s journey and Leopold’s motivation, there is something uncomfortable in centering so much of the book around her own experiences as a British woman traveling in Africa in search of answers. Roberts misses the irony of positioning herself as the main character in this effort to remedy historical erasure.

A little-known episode of colonial African history paired with a conceptually problematic personal account.

Kirkus Reviews