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Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart | 
 enlarge | Author: Tim Butcher
Publisher: Grove Press
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $15.45
You Save: $9.55 (38%)
New (35) Used (9) from $15.45
Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 4684
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 0802118771
Dewey Decimal Number: 916.7510434
EAN: 9780802118776
ASIN: 0802118771
Publication Date: October 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081130225628T
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Exploring the Congo more than a century after Stanley September 4, 2008
A. J. CORNISH-BOWDEN (Marseilles, France)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
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 less 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.
A THINKING/CARING GUIDE TO THE PRESENT CONGO September 17, 2008
Mary Jo Loehle
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
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.
Telling It The Way It Is September 14, 2008
David Donelson
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
When Tim Butcher describes a city in the modern Democratic Republic of Congo as "a sad collection of ruins," he could well have been describing the entire country, whose endless struggle over control of its rich resources during the past 100-plus years has left it mostly in shambles. This highly readable account of Butcher's attempt to follow the path of Henry Stanley's 1784 expedition to map the Congo River gives ample testimony to the difficulties of not just travel but of daily life in this sadly exploited nation.
Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo
A good complement to other recent books on the Congo September 19, 2008
Derek Byerlee (Washington, Dc USA)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
This book is a good reminder of how the bottom of the bottom billion survive, and the importance of a minimal level of governance. Nonetheless, the author overdoes the comparisons with pre-independence Congo. Although the colonial masters undoubtedly lived well, life was far from a bed or roses for the masses--the fact that Belgium invested so little in basic services for the Congolese, is one reason the country is still a mess, even as many African countries are now rapidly advancing.
Great collateral reading November 16, 2008
James M. Cress (Rolla, Missouri)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Blood River
Africa has been in the US news during the recent Presidential campaign and water cooler discussions about what we should or should not be doing prompted my British co worker to suggest Blood River. The book is a recollection of a great adventure. An incredible journey retracing Stanley's journey in the Congo. The discriptions of this demanding and dangerous journey are both revealing and sad. This feat was so incredible that locals questioned his honesty when he told them he had travelled overland. Commenting on the decline of the area, the author asks why the Africans are so inept at governing themselves. It is not for the lack of foreign aid or natural resources. The answer is a lack of solvent African leadership and the a resulting breakdown from an infant civilization to a condition where the safest place to be in the bush. "City bad, bush good".
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