November Books 16) King Leopold's Ghost, by Adam Hochschild

[nwhyte]

More or less by coincidence, this is the second book about Congo that I have read this month. This is the story of an earlier era, of the awful exploitation, rape and murder of vast numbers of Africans under the personal supervision of Leopold II, King of the Belgians. Hochschild admits that precise figures are difficult to establish with

Comments

[peadarog]

I first came across this story in Thomas Pakenham's The Scramble for Africa. Jaw-dropping is the only word.

[pvaneynd]

Visiting that museum is rather ... difficult if you want to correct and explain all the things that are there.

And I'm not even remotely as aware of the history as I should be :-(

[inulro]

I read King Leopold's Ghost a few years ago, and finally got round to reading Heart of Darkness on the back of that. I'm probably the only English Lit grad who read it for the true historical parallels.