Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart [Hardcover]

Tim Butcher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2008

Published to rave reviews in the United Kingdom and named a Richard & Judy Book Club selection—the only work of nonfiction on the 2008 list—Blood River is the harrowing and audacious story of Tim Butcher's journey in the Congo and his retracing of renowned explorer H. M. Stanley's famous 1874 expedition in which he mapped the Congo River. When Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to Africa in 2000 he quickly became obsessed with the legendary Congo River and the idea of re-creating Stanley's legendary journey along the three-thousand-mile waterway. Despite warnings that his plan was suicidal, Butcher set out for the Congo's eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots. Making his way in an assortment of vehicles, including a motorbike and a dugout canoe, helped along by a cast of characters from UN aid workers to a pygmy-rights advocate, he followed in the footsteps of the great Victorian adventurers. An utterly absorbing narrative that chronicles Tim Butcher's forty-four-day journey along the Congo River, Blood River is an unforgettable story of exploration and survival.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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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From Booklist

A journalist for the UK’s Daily Telegraph, Butcher undertook a hazardous African trip in 2004, traveling from Lake Tanganyika to the Atlantic Ocean via the Congo River. And he did not travel via foreigners’ usual conveyance in Africa—aircraft—but overland by motorbike, dugout canoe, and UN patrol boat. This account of his six-week-long journey proves to be an exceptionally gripping example of travel writing, not only because of its roster of obstacles surmounted by the resourceful traveler but also because of its empathy for those who assisted Butcher in passing through the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Encountering ordinary Congolese, staff of the UN and humanitarian agencies, and elderly holdovers from the Belgian colonial era, Butcher catches their life stories as he recounts the historical waypoints (such as Henry Stanley’s 1874–77 exploration, whose route Butcher followed) in Congo’s connection to and postcolonial detachment from the modern world, symbolized in dilapidated sights such as crumbling post offices and hulks of river boats. Depicting the country’s dire physical plight and lawless corruption, Butcher delivers an unblinking firsthand portrait of contemporary Congo. --Gilbert Taylor

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; First Edition edition (October 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802118771
• ISBN-13: 978-0802118776
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #577,602 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tim Butcher is an award-winning journalist, best-selling author and proud resident of Cape Town.

British-born, he has climbed mountains in New Zealand, learnt enough Albanian to smuggle himself into Kosovo during the 1999 war and survived four years living in Johannesburg.

His first book, Blood River - A Journey To Africa's Broken Heart, topped the Sunday Times best-seller list in 2008 and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, Britain's top non-fiction book award. Translated into six languages it was a Richard & Judy Book Club selection for 2008.

In the 2003 Gulf War he led the Daily Telegraph's award-winning reporting team in Iraq and was shortlisted for the prestigious Foreign Press Association reporter of the year award for his coverage of the 2006 Lebanon war. He is a regular contributor to the BBC's prestigious foreign affairs programme, From Our Own Correspondent.

Born in 1967 and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, he was on the staff of the Telegraph from 1990 to 2009 and is is currently writing a book on Liberia called Chasing The Devil to be published in late 2010.

He has also contributed to a number of compilation books including:

From Joburg To Jozi, published in 2002 by Penguin, a collection of short stories on Johannesburg.

Soweto Inside Out, published in 2004 by Penguin, a collection of short stories on Soweto.

From Our Own Correspondent - a celebration of fifty years of the BBC Radio Programme, published in 2005 by Profile

Because I Am A Girl, published in 2010 by Vintage, a collection of pieces of writing designed to highlight the plight of girls in the developing world. Proceeds from the sale of the book go to Plan International, a leading humanitarian group specialising in children's rights around the world.

He lives in South Africa with his girlfriend and their two children, Kit and Tess.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exploring the Congo more than a century after Stanley, September 4, 2008

By 

A. J. Cornish Bowden (Marseilles, France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart (Hardcover)

Fifty years ago the Democratic Republic of Congo -- then just ceasing to be the Belgian Congo -- had a modern network of roads, railways and river transportation, with adequate accommodation available in all of the main centres. Today none of that exists, and the only practical way of getting about is by air, and that with difficulty and even danger. As Tim Butcher remarks at one point, "I looked at the sickly child and tried to think of another country in the world where a baby born in the same place half a century earlier had more chance of surviving than today" (the last few words are quoted from memory, and hence are probably quoted inaccurately).

So when he decided to follow Henry Morton Stanley's land route in the 1870s from Lake Tanganyika to the River Congo and then follow the river to Boma, on the coast, this was not the trivial task it would have been in the 1950s, and many experts on the country said it would be impossible and dangerous and that he would almost certainly be killed if he attempted it. In some ways he had an even more difficult task than Stanley, with no Zanzibari bearers to carry all his stuff, and no guns to shoot anyone who tried to thwart him. Nonetheless, he largely succeeded (with considerable help, it must be said, from a series of aid workers and United Nations representatives), apart from flying about a quarter of the total distance, from Mbandaka to Kinshasa ("no capital city in the world more unrepresentative of its country"), when he felt to ill to continue. He describes Mbandaka as "a sad collection of ruins", but unfortunately this description applies equally well to almost everywhere he went.

Apart from its interest as a modern adventure story, Blood River is well worth reading for what it tells us about the modern Congo, and how it got that way, with much information about Stanley's initial colonization, exploitation as the personal property of King Leopold, later as a Belgian colony, and now independent, with essentially permanent armed conflict.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A THINKING/CARING GUIDE TO THE PRESENT CONGO, September 17, 2008

By 

Mary Jo Loehle - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart (Hardcover)

Tim Butcher's book BLOOD RIVER was recommended by Amazon last summer and I bought it because I am fascinated by the Congo. Having read King Leopold's Ghost,In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz, Heart of Darkness as well as The Poisonwood Bible, I was intrigued by an update on the Congo, especially by someone adventurous (I did think crazy)enough to try to follow Stanley's journey across Africa from east to west in the current political/savage climate.
Mr. Butcher is a journalist, so he knows how to use words to convey a mood, or a place or a person. And in this book, he is at his best. You are tugged along almost reluctantly on his trip,knowing that he obviously survived, but wondering how he could have possibly made it all the way. Everyone told him not to try it, but somehow there were also very helpful people along the way.
The one man who begged him to take his four year old with him, the guys on the motorbikes, the pirogue pole guys and the captain of the boat are all unforgettable. I especially liked that Mr. Butcher would bring in historical asides, liked the making of the African Queen and Katherine Hepburn in the hotel that is no longer there, or the travel guide that his mother had. He brings in all the hard historical stuff also, like the Belgians and the hand cutting, as well as the slavery trade.
If you want a book that has it all, plus pictures, get this book and hop on behind Mr. Butcher as he pursues a dream/nightmare journey through Africa.

38 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A rather ordinary book about an extraordinary hellhole, November 22, 2008

By 

R. M. Peterson (Santa Fe, NM) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart (Hardcover)

Tim Butcher was the African correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, the newspaper that sponsored two of Henry Stanley's African expeditions. Butcher got the notion to re-trace Stanley's trek across the Congo, from Lake Tanganyika to the mouth of the Congo River on the Atlantic Ocean. In 2004, during a relative lull in the bloodshed and anarchic mayhem that has convulsed the interior of the Congo for decades, Buther took six weeks to make the journey, by motor-bike, UN river boats, pirogue, helicopter, and jeep. BLOOD RIVER is his account of his trek, interspersed with history of the Congo, from the initial colonization of the Portuguese, to the brutal and greedy rule of King Leopold and the Belgians, to the post-colonial era, during which the rape and exploitation of the country, and the attendant bloodshed, has continued apace, perhaps at times even intensifying.

There undoubtedly is much of interest and value in BLOOD RIVER, but there are three overriding problems with the book. First, I have the sense that Butcher tends to be sloppy with his facts. For example, he implies that ebola was one of the tropical diseases that confronted 19th-Century European explorers and he states that Joseph Conrad, when he came to the Congo for his one mission there (the basis for Conrad's "The Heart of Darkness"), was "a professional skipper of steamboats." Minor errors, to be sure, but they force me to take all of Butcher's factual pronouncements with a grain of salt.

Second, Butcher's writing is ordinary. He is prone to needless repetition, and far too often his writing is cliched and overly melodramatic. For example: "That moment when I left the east bank of the river was special for me. I had achieved something that many people had thought impossible by crossing overland from Lake Tanganyika all the way to the Congo River, through some of the most dangerous terrain on the planet. With my own eyes I had peered into a hidden African world * * *." Or: "I sat in the darkness, thinking of my journey so far and how remote this area had become. A yachtsman on the southern seas or a climber in the Himalayas had more chance of rescue than I did."

Third, Butcher is not what you would call self-effacing. He is mightily impressed with himself and he tries mightily to make sure that we are equally impressed. Time and again, he writes about how dangerous and unprecedented, even reckless, his trip was. To be sure, for six weeks he had to endure tropical heat and insects, eat unappetizing native foods such as cassava, wait in squalid quarters while he made arrangements for the next leg of his journey, and be harassed by some officious and arrogant Congolese. But nothing life-threatening or especially painful actually happened to him.

Reading BLOOD RIVER is not a waste of time. In particular, it reinforces the principal point I have taken from other books on contemporary equatorial Africa, namely, that conditions now are worse than they were a third of a century ago and there is little reason to believe they will improve in the near future. But, whether you are interested in the Congo or the genre of adventure travel, there are other books out there that are more worth your time.