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Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart

List Price: £7.99
The Travel Guides Price: £3.86
Subject To Change Without Notice
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
Manufacturer: Vintage

Average Customer Rating:

Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780099494287
ISBN: 0099494280
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: 2008-01-03
Publisher: Vintage
Studio: Vintage

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Editorial Reviews:

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.

Spotlight customer reviews:

Customer Rating:

Summary: Helen Zetter
Comment: Interesting!Well written.A Treacherous trip following the footsteps of H.M.Stanley crossing the Congo.Certainly Tim Butcher did his homework researching and telling the readers the history of the Congo.His journey is very beleivable,but rather sad.It was a book which was a little repetetive but that may be was due to the aid workers who one felt were very stuck there finding their tasks ardious.I feel the book is very much a mans book however ones interests lie in Africa.It is sad to say such circumstances still have to exsist.

Customer Rating:

Summary: A fantastic book
Comment: How anyone can call 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 and 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 and some thoughtful and brilliantly expressed passages. I would like to ask any of the critics of the book to place themselves in Butcher's position and 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. Personally, I loved it.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Disappointingly dull
Comment: 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 actually 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 all a bit too much for Butcher and lost the plot fairly early on. Although he meets numerous people along the way, he seems to be - and feel - distant from everyone. They're just thin sketches. It's not clear whether that's because: Butcher wasn't really 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 and Murphy, you'll be sorely disappointed by this.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Engaging but ultimately unfulfilling
Comment: 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 and much of this feels over familiar and repetitious. Butcher writes well enough but lacks the ability to convey a deeper understanding. He aint no Kapucinski. But a worthy effort and hats off to him for meeting such a daunting challenge. More than I've ever managed. But, hey, I'm just an interested but slightly disappointed reader.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Somewhat interesting
Comment: I had high expectations for this book. The Congo is a hot African topic. There were certainly intersting segments, mainly the people Butcher encounters and the deplorable state of the Congo. There was n othing new really from his histrocial references. Much of the book seemed familiar to me and 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 really intrepd African traveller I recommend the books by the great Polish journalist (who spent over 30 years in Africa): Ryszard Kapuscinski. Especially his book "The Shadow of the Sun".

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