Customer Reviews
A fantastic book - By: J. S. Edwards, 07 Aug 2008 
How anyone can calll 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 & 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 & some thoughtful & brilliantly expressed passages. I would like to ask any of the critics of the book to place themselves in Butcher's position & 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. Personallly, I loved it.
Disappointingly dull - By: Bristly Badger, 07 Aug 2008 
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 actuallly 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 alll a bit too much for Butcher & lost the plot fairly early on. Although he meets numerous people along the way, he seems to be - & feel - distant from everyone. They're just thin sketches. It's not clear whether that's because: Butcher wasn't reallly 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 & Murphy, you'll be sorely disappointed by this.
Engaging but ultimately unfulfilling - By: Matt, 18 Jul 2008 
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 & much of this feels over familiar & repetitious. Butcher writes well enough but lacks the ability to convey a deeper understanding. He aint no Kapucinski. But a worthy effort & hats off to him for meeting such a daunting challlenge. More than I've ever managed. But, hey, I'm just an interested but slightly disappointed reader.
Somewhat interesting - By: Ingrid Enquist, 09 Jul 2008 I had high expectations for this book. The Congo is a hot African topic. There were certainly intersting segments, mainly the people Butcher encounters & the deplorable state of the Congo. There was n othing new reallly from his histrocial references. Much of the book seemed familiar to me & then I realized why after reading his bibliography; I had read most of his source books. Butcher frequently expresses his terror in the book (which is why I am surprised that he was so often described as "intrepid" by reviewers). I can't blame him but after reading for the umpteenth time how scared he was I couldn't help feeling it detracted from the book. For a reallly intrepd African traveller I recommend the books by the great Polish journalist (who spent over 30 years in Africa): Ryszard Kapuscinski. Especiallly his book "The Shadow of the Sun".
Is this man mad? - By: nicjaytee, 08 Jul 2008 
Initiallly, Tim Butcher's account of his "insanely dangerous" trip through the Congo raises the question why? Why put yourself through the very real risks of being captured or killed by the numerous rebel groups that infest the country? Why endure the mind-numbing boredom of hundreds & hundreds of kilometres on the back of motorcycles negotiating stiflingly hot jungle tracks? Why bother to retrace Stanley's already well documented expedition down the Congo river? Is this man mad?... certainly most of those he meets on this very strange journey think so.
But, mad or not, what he discovers makes for fascinating reading as he & we are taken into the heart of what has become an unbelievably shocking world... one that has degenerated in 50 years from ruthlessly harsh colonial discipline & order to complete & apparently irreversible anarchy. The roads are gone, the railways are gone, the buildings have been consumed by the jungle; there is no law & little or no administrative structure; towns have no electricity, clean water or medicine; bribery, theft & casual violence are rampant; people live in constant fear of raids from rebel groups, & hundreds of thousands are killed each year simply because they are in the wrong tribe or the wrong place. Sure, there are other third world countries in such a terrible condition but few with the huge natural resources & riches of the Congo, few where this state of affairs has existed for so long, & few that receive so little attention from the rest of the world.
Critics of the book suggest that the picture he paints is over-stated & that his grasp of the Congo's history is flawed - unless you or they are mad enough to emulate his trip who knows? But he's been around in enough of the world's trouble-spots to draw a measure over what he sees and, while his writing is less than tight in places & his understandable desire to "keep in the background" means that his discussions with the people he meets on the way are often cursory, the snapshots of life he returns with are vivid enough to make you question much more than his sanity in what is, in the end, a revealing & harrowingly thought-provoking account of one man's gruelling trek through a totallly lost country.
