Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart
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Amazon.co.uk
JOHN LE CARRE
Quite superb…..a masterpiece
WILLIAM BOYD
Tim Butcher's extraordinary, audacious journey through the Congo is worthy of the great 19th century explorers. Completely enthralling but also a thoughtful and sobering portrait of modern Africa
ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH
A remarkable, fascinating book by a courageous and perceptive writer. One of the most exciting books to emerge from Africa in recent years.
THE SUNDAY TIMES
Tim Butcher’s book is the latest in a long line, running through Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, VS Nai-paul… his account of a hair-rising trip from east to west, against all advice, by motorbike and then river boat, is gripping and harshly informative…
MAX HASTINGS
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.
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
From his adventure he has plundered a wealth of terrific stories, and survived to recite a rosary of unstinting horror.
FERGAL KEANE
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.
HATCHARDS
…unputdownable…
GILES FODEN
An intrepid adventure... 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 which keeps you engrossed.
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
..stirring and thought-provoking.
AESTHETICA MAGAZINE
….a remarkable travelogue of exquisite proportions…. highly emotive, historical and personal…Butcher’s elegant style demands the reader’s attention…….Blood River is nothing short of a modern-day masterpiece.
WANDERLUST
What makes Blood River such a compelling read is the fact that the journey becomes an exercise in mental terror, the author skilfully conveying the exhaustion of six weeks on tenterhooks, wondering what might happen just around the next bend.
THOMAS PAKENHAM
Tim Butcher deserves a medal for this crazy feat. I marvel at his courage and his empathy with the unfortunate Congolese...
ESQUIRE
…gripping…
TRAVEL AFRICA
The past meets present in this enthralling travelogue through the depths of the Congo.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.Review
The best thing about Blood River, with its hair-raising descriptions of jungle wildlife (no, not the animals, they've all been eaten - the trigger-happy Mai Mai militia, drunk, stoned, volatile, superstitious and anti-white), is the matter-of-fact way he tells it. When he's terrified, he says, he can feel it behind his knees. This isn't a professional, direct-to-camera, Simpsonesque 'how I liberated Kabul' performance. It's straight from the knees. --Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Quite superb..a masterpiece. --John Le Carre
From his adventure he has plundered a wealth of terrific stories, and survived to recite a rosary of unstinting horror. --The Daily Telegraph
Quite superb..a masterpiece. --John Le Carre
From his adventure he has plundered a wealth of terrific stories, and survived to recite a rosary of unstinting horror. --The Daily Telegraph
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Have we forgotten about The Congo? It's a country left to rot by its so-called civilisers, rendered now, once again, in Joseph Conrad's words "...the blankest of blank spaces on the earth's figured surface". It wasn't always thus and Tim Butcher has done the profound, if unwelcome, service of reminding the world of its existence with this amazing book.
Butcher describes his journey as "ordeal travel" rather than straight adventuring in the old-fashioned sense, which is what Stanley, he of the "Livingstone, I presume," moment, was all about. Butcher follows the journey as made by Stanley, who in the end vindicated his reputation with a heroic last leg, his entourage brought to their knees by the privations of the jungle and, most of all, the Congo River. Butcher does something similar, and along the way introduces the reader to many ordinary people whose life-stories he allows them to tell in their own words. The stories are mainly ones that the rest of the world doesn't seem to want to hear. Here is a man in a town called Kasongo: "I am the mayor, appointed by the transitional government in Kinshasa. But I have no contact with them because we have no phone, and 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. I would say I am just waiting, waiting for things to get back to normal."
Civil society has broken down in The Congo. There is no rule of law; there is no lasting peace and the phrase comes again and again as Butcher talks to people "... we fled into the bush." The Congo is ruled by wandering bands of rootless and homeless soldiery, from one faction or another. Civil society has been abandoned in a souless cycle of murder, rape, looting and thieving. The only answer people have is to flee into the bush, to hide and hope that something will be left when they come back.
Butcher identifies the primal loss to be one of a sense of sovereignty and control. Colonisation can be blamed for creating this situation, but the people of Africa must share responsibility for their inability to initiate change. Former colonies in Asia have been able to develop; it is only in Africa that they have been able only to regress. "The cruelty and greed of African dictators is mostly to blame, but it is also true that the peoples of Africa have not been capable of working together to rein in the excesses of dictators." Isolated pockets of aid and peace-keeping - charities and the UN, mainly - are not the answer.
In the end, Butcher's journey was worthwhile - not because it satisfied his sense of dramatic wanderlust, or even for its epic feats of endurance - but because the book created from it tells the story of the heartbreak at the centre of Africa - it seems wrong, cheap, to use that well-worn phrase, but it also seems inevitable: it *is* unbearably, and still, the heart of darkness.
Butcher describes his journey as "ordeal travel" rather than straight adventuring in the old-fashioned sense, which is what Stanley, he of the "Livingstone, I presume," moment, was all about. Butcher follows the journey as made by Stanley, who in the end vindicated his reputation with a heroic last leg, his entourage brought to their knees by the privations of the jungle and, most of all, the Congo River. Butcher does something similar, and along the way introduces the reader to many ordinary people whose life-stories he allows them to tell in their own words. The stories are mainly ones that the rest of the world doesn't seem to want to hear. Here is a man in a town called Kasongo: "I am the mayor, appointed by the transitional government in Kinshasa. But I have no contact with them because we have no phone, and 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. I would say I am just waiting, waiting for things to get back to normal."
Civil society has broken down in The Congo. There is no rule of law; there is no lasting peace and the phrase comes again and again as Butcher talks to people "... we fled into the bush." The Congo is ruled by wandering bands of rootless and homeless soldiery, from one faction or another. Civil society has been abandoned in a souless cycle of murder, rape, looting and thieving. The only answer people have is to flee into the bush, to hide and hope that something will be left when they come back.
Butcher identifies the primal loss to be one of a sense of sovereignty and control. Colonisation can be blamed for creating this situation, but the people of Africa must share responsibility for their inability to initiate change. Former colonies in Asia have been able to develop; it is only in Africa that they have been able only to regress. "The cruelty and greed of African dictators is mostly to blame, but it is also true that the peoples of Africa have not been capable of working together to rein in the excesses of dictators." Isolated pockets of aid and peace-keeping - charities and the UN, mainly - are not the answer.
In the end, Butcher's journey was worthwhile - not because it satisfied his sense of dramatic wanderlust, or even for its epic feats of endurance - but because the book created from it tells the story of the heartbreak at the centre of Africa - it seems wrong, cheap, to use that well-worn phrase, but it also seems inevitable: it *is* unbearably, and still, the heart of darkness.
71 of 78 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As a fan of writers like Jonathan Raban and Simon Winchester, who weave historical narrative into their own personal quests and journeys, I sent for Blood River after catching the tail end of a radio interview in which Tim Butcher described the various strands which run in parallel through his book.
I found it a compelling and satisfying read. There is the central account of the author's apparently impulsive decision to travel, against all advice, through the Republic of Congo in the first place, while it is in an on/off state of civil war; the lives of the equally intrepid Victorian adventurers who went before him; and as backdrop, the grindingly bleak and heartbreaking history of colonial, post colonial and present-day Congo. Three stories for the price of one - four if you count the heavy-hearted journey through the Congo in the late 1950's, after disappointment in love, of the author's mother.
Butcher's prose style, as you'd expect from a seasoned journalist, is crisp, economical and forward-flowing; but he is not afraid to share his vulnerabilities and his (abundantly justified) fear of what might easily have lain ahead at any point on the journey - `objective dangers', as he calls them, over which he had little control. I warmed to him for that, and for his empathy towards the ordinary Congolese he encounters: for me, they are the heroes of the story, helpless victims of an endless cycle of exploitation, violence and political bankruptcy.
Blood River is a gripping story well told; but beyond that, unlike some have-the-adventure-to-write-the-book yarns, it is highly relevant and by rights should tweak the conscience of those of us in the developed world who looked the other way.
I found it a compelling and satisfying read. There is the central account of the author's apparently impulsive decision to travel, against all advice, through the Republic of Congo in the first place, while it is in an on/off state of civil war; the lives of the equally intrepid Victorian adventurers who went before him; and as backdrop, the grindingly bleak and heartbreaking history of colonial, post colonial and present-day Congo. Three stories for the price of one - four if you count the heavy-hearted journey through the Congo in the late 1950's, after disappointment in love, of the author's mother.
Butcher's prose style, as you'd expect from a seasoned journalist, is crisp, economical and forward-flowing; but he is not afraid to share his vulnerabilities and his (abundantly justified) fear of what might easily have lain ahead at any point on the journey - `objective dangers', as he calls them, over which he had little control. I warmed to him for that, and for his empathy towards the ordinary Congolese he encounters: for me, they are the heroes of the story, helpless victims of an endless cycle of exploitation, violence and political bankruptcy.
Blood River is a gripping story well told; but beyond that, unlike some have-the-adventure-to-write-the-book yarns, it is highly relevant and by rights should tweak the conscience of those of us in the developed world who looked the other way.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
am still reading the book, but I enjoy the style and pace of the story. The book gives a lot of info with regard to the congolese history. Great read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Thought provoking & interesting
A friend said I had to read this book. He was so enthused about it, I ordered it straight away - bargain at 1p too! Read more
Published 7 days ago by N. E. Fountain
An incredibly brave and worthwhile journey.........
Tim Butcher's book charts his experiences during an incredibly brave journey tracing tha path that HM Stanley took to chart the course of the great Congo River that courses through... Read more
Published 1 month ago by DelWij
Great Journey
This is the story of the re-tracing of Henry Morton Stanley's crossing of Africa; it makes for fascinating reading. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Wendy Unsworth
Astonishingly over-rated
Bought this book after reading Tim Jeal's biog of HM Stanley and "Explorers of the Nile": each a superb read, especially the magnificent "Stanley". Read more
Published 3 months ago by JimJIm
An excellent read
I found this book to be a really good read. It was a real page turner, and both exciting and compelling.
Published 4 months ago by maloy
Unadventurous
This book is well written and interesting from a historical perspective and social comment on the Congo.
However it does not rate at all as an adventure. Read more
However it does not rate at all as an adventure. Read more
Published 4 months ago by lester
Bold Down The River
I didn't like the sound of this book at first, thinking it was an example of macho adventure tourism but I am pleased to say that I was mistaken. Read more
Published 6 months ago by F Henwood
Ripper
It is very refreshing to read a book about a less well known country that has not already become a holiday destination. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Salamander
Great journey by the wrong man to tell it
The 2 stars reflects the epicness of the feet Butcher achieved, but my god, of all the people in the world, why did a man from the telegraph have to tell it. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Subes
Very good book!
I loved this book and have really enjoyed reading it and going through what he experiences on his journey. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Smith
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