A New York Times Bestseller
“Quite superb . . . a masterpiece.” —John le Carré
“Less an adventure tale than a journalistic investigation of what has gone wrong in the Congo, and why . . . Butcher’s breadth of knowledge is both impressive and eclectic.” —Washington Post
“Some travel is inspired, some courageous, some insane. And every now and then someone undertakes a trek that is all three, as happened when Butcher traveled the length of the Congo River . . . a gripping account of [Butcher’s] perilous journey through the heart of Africa and its embattled people.” —Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Devastating yet strangely exhilarating . . . [Butcher’s] 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.” —Publishers Weekly
“A somber, eye-opening journey into the definitive heart of darkness . . . a brilliant account of a broken land, one that certainly deserves the attention this excellent book brings.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Tim Butcher deserves a medal for this crazy feat. I marvel at his courage and his empathy with the unfortunate Congolese when he re-enacted Stanley’s appalling journey across the continent.” —Thomas Pakenham, author of The Scramble for Africa
“This is a terrific book, an adventure story about a journey of great bravery in one of the world’s most dangerous places. It keeps the heart beating and the attention fixed from beginning to end.” —Fergal Keane, author of Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey
“It’s a fine book, and I greatly enjoyed it. It’s a story of the extraordinary courage, tenacity and endurance of two men: H.M. Stanley, and Tim Butcher, who wrote it. The DR Congo is one of the most dangerous and unpredictable countries on earth, and to have penetrated into the depths of its darkness and described it so fully is a great achievement. It even left me with more of an affection for Stanley than I have ever felt before. As for Butcher, I have nothing but admiration for him.” —John Simpson, author of Simpson’s World: Dispatches from the Front Line
“A grim and gripping read.” —Christopher Hart, Sunday Times
“Gripping.” —Esquire
“From his adventure, [Butcher] has plundered a wealth of terrific stories and survived to recite a rosary of unstinting horror.” —Nicholas Shakespeare, The Telegraph
“Butcher’s 21st century eye gives a whole new slant on [Stanley’s] African expedition.” —Sunday Express
“Both stirring and thought-provoking.” —Anthony Daniels, Sunday Telegraph
“What makes Blood River such a compelling read is the fact that the journey becomes an exercise in mental terror, the author skillfully conveying the exhaustion of six weeks on tenterhooks, wondering what might happen just around the next bend.” —Jim Blackburn, Wanderlust
“A remarkable travelogue of exquisite proportions . . . nothing short of a modern-day masterpiece.” —Aesthetica Magazine
“It throws light on a place that lives in such extreme darkness, most of us have lost sight of it completely. In doing so it reminds us that travel writing can still be exciting, uncompromising and politically relevant.”—Anthony Sattin, Spectator
“Butcher’s account of his journey down the ‘Blood River’ is terrific in every sense . . . It is an extraordinarily compelling book by a talented writer with something to say—and I suspect that Conrad would have liked it very much indeed.” —Geographical Magazine
“A remarkable, fascinating book by a courageous and perceptive writer. One of the most exciting books to emerge from Africa in recent years.” —Alexander McCall Smith
“This is a terrific book, an adventure story about a journey of great bravery in one of the world’s most dangerous places.” —Fergal Keane, author of Season of Blood
“An intrepid adventure. In making and describing this journey, Tim Butcher has followed in the footsteps of Stanley and Conrad. It takes a lot of guts to yomp through the Congo and he obviously has plenty of those. But it is the wit and passion of the writing that keeps you engrossed.” —Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland
“The day of the solitary intrepid traveler is not over. Tim Butcher’s extraordinary, audacious journey through the Congo is worthy of the great nineteenth-century explorers. Completely enthralling but also a thoughtful and sobering portrait of modern Africa.” —William Boyd, author of Restless
“Tim Butcher deserves a medal for this crazy feat. I marvel at his courage and his empathy with the unfortunate Congolese when he reenacted Stanley’s appalling journey across the continent.” —Thomas Pakenham, author of The Scramble For Africa
“Tim Butcher has written a wonderful adventure story about one of the least known regions of modern Africa—because it is among the most dangerous. Blood River represents 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, author of Armageddon: The Battle For Germany
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.
—The Washington Post
"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.)
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Part adventure travelog and part historical narrative, this book chronicles Daily Telegraph correspondent Butcher's intrepid journey across the heart of the Congo. As the Telegraph's African bureau chief, Butcher sought to appease his growing obsession with this troubled African nation by retracing H.M. Stanley's famous 1874 mapping expedition of the Congo River. Thus ensued an amazing 44-day adventure through some of the Congo's most dangerous regions, many untraveled in decades. Thankfully, the text offers more than just a solitary explorer's romp and reflection through Africa. Although at times caught up in his personal struggles with loneliness, disease, and fatigue, Butcher does manage to accomplish a greater good. He shares the stories of ordinary people, aid workers, and missionaries all desperately trying to subsist in a country lacking the fundamentals of law and order. It is in these moments that his book shines. What Butcher's tale lacks in political analysis is redeemed by the honesty of his writing and his genuine attempt to bring international interest to the Congo and the struggles of its citizens. Recommended for large public libraries and academic libraries with African studies, geography, or travel collections.
—Veronica Arellano
A somber, eye-opening journey into the definitive heart of darkness. Joseph Conrad is the tutelary spirit of this work by Daily Telegraph correspondent Butcher, who for years "had stared at maps dominated by the Congo River, a silver-bladed sickle, its handle anchored on the coasts, its tip buried deep in the equatorial forest" and, emphatically without the approval of his newspaper employer, decided to travel the 3,000-odd-mile length of the river. Conrad may be the spirit, but the book's more literal guide is the 19th-century adventurer Henry Stanley, as miscreant an imperialist as ever there was. Half a century ago, Butcher's mother made the voyage down the Congo, but that was before the country had disintegrated into postcolonial civil war and what Butcher, quoting her, refers to as "a great deal of ‘beastliness.' " An ardent student of history and culture, Butcher could find no single expert, before undertaking his voyage, who could make sense of the entire country. After his trip, so eloquently described here, he may be the only Western journalist with such a handle on that vast region. His book is of tremendous use to geographers, development specialists and humanitarian aid workers, as well as armchair travelers. One thing he turns up almost immediately is the impossibility of domestic harmony in a land where local government is impossible. As one of his interlocutors, a town mayor, says, "I can pay no civil servants because I have no money and there is no bank or post office where money could be received, and we have no civil servants because all the schools and hospitals and everything do not work." Nonetheless, Butcher finds a few rays of hope even in a place where, by hisreckoning, about 1,200 lives a day are lost in a civil war that the international community seems to consider "a lost cause without hope of ever being put right."A brilliant account of a broken land, one that certainly deserves the attention this excellent book brings. Agent: Camilla Hornby/Curtis Brown
