Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #147 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Customer Reviews

A fantastic book
How anyone can call this book dull is beyond me. I admire the way that Butcher persevered through what most travellers would consider pretty terrifying conditions. My stomach churned at times and I imagined how I would probably have bottled out of many of the 'towns' that he ventured through. The book itself is brilliantly written with a keen eye on the historical context and some thoughtful and brilliantly expressed passages. I would like to ask any of the critics of the book to place themselves in Butcher's position and see if they could have managed it. How easy it is easy to give one star to a book like this in the comfort of your own home. Personally, I loved it.

Disappointingly dull
Tim Butcher is a journalist, no doubt good at reporting the facts (insofar as any journalist can). But he's not a writer. The main problem is that there is no change of pace throughout this book. It doesn't matter whether he's planning the journey (a good third of the book) or actually on the journey in dangerous places: it just plods along with the same dribble of information. Butcher is obsessively worried about the fact that the Congo is not the place that it was when the Belgians exercised their extreme authority there. So far, so unsurprising. And this obsession with what's been lost means that none of the places or the people ever come alive in the present. I wonder if the journey was all a bit too much for Butcher and lost the plot fairly early on. Although he meets numerous people along the way, he seems to be - and feel - distant from everyone. They're just thin sketches. It's not clear whether that's because: Butcher wasn't really interested in them; didn't make the effort to talk to them; is a rather stiff, diffident Englishman who can't interact; or just lacked the spirit to record the interactions. If you've enjoyed O'Hanlon's Congo Journey or love travel writing by Thubron and Murphy, you'll be sorely disappointed by this.

Engaging but ultimately unfulfilling
This is a page turner, no doubt. The details of his journey are mildly interesting, the people he meets much more so. But there are better books on the DRC and much of this feels over familiar and repetitious. Butcher writes well enough but lacks the ability to convey a deeper understanding. He aint no Kapucinski. But a worthy effort and hats off to him for meeting such a daunting challenge. More than I've ever managed. But, hey, I'm just an interested but slightly disappointed reader.