Facing the Congo Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Facing the Congo Book

Recent years have seen a spate of "Congo books". Ronan Bennett, Barbara Kingsolver and John Edric have written acclaimed Congo novels, and Adam Hochschild's history, King Leopold's Ghost, documents the atrocities committed during rubber fever, when 8,000,000 died in the Belgian Congo and up to 14,000,000 died in French Equatorial Africa. In the travel genre, we have had Redmond O'Hanlon's great Congo Journey and Michaela Wrong's In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz. The combination of historical tragedy and contemporary anarchy makes this rich hunting ground for writers, but also provokes serious ethical questions about writing commercial books on a destroyed country--questions which only the nature of the books themselves can answer.Facing the Congo is the latest such book. In it, Jeffrey Tayler recounts his attempt to canoe the navigable length of sub-Saharan Africa's most symbolic river. Equipped with help from one of Mobutu's henchmen and an ailing guide, Tayler finds things far from plain sailing. Negotiating corrupt officialdom, murderous peoples on the riverbanks, widespread suspicion and the dangers of the river itself, he ultimately finds his plans too demanding to be fully realised.Tayler's prose is often evocative and his story is a compelling one. But he tends to load his descriptions with adjectives, which can over-dramatise situations. Of course this is a dramatic adventure, and Tayler tells it well, but at the end you can't help feeling that too little attention is paid to the root causes of both his troubles and the current situation in the Congo--rubber fever, greed and a callous European superiority complex. --Toby GreenRead More

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  • Amazon

    Outstanding travel narrative about a journey up the Congo river: superbly evocative writing in the tradition of Paul Theroux and Bruce Chatwin

  • Foyles

    At thirty-three one's direction in life should be clear, and mine was not.' In search of some direction, or at least a new challenge, Jeffrey Tayler gave up his day job of opening rejection letters from publishers and went exploring. Having always been fascinated by Africa and the great age of Victorian exploration he went to Kinshasa in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and found a boat to take him up-river to Kisangani, deep in the heart of the jungle. Not content with that, he then bought a pirogue (a kind of canoe), hired a guide and set out to paddle the 1,000 miles back to Kinshasa.A personal journey, an intrepid voyage, an exceptionally well-written travelogue: FACING THE CONGO is all these things and more. A wonderfully vivid and exciting read for armchair adventurers everywhere.

  • 0349114501
  • 9780349114507
  • Jeffrey Tayler
  • 2 May 2002
  • Abacus
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 341
  • New edition
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