Congo by David Van Reybrouck

Congo by David Van Reybrouck

The gripping saga of one of the world's most devastated countries

The Democratic Republic of Congo currently ranks among the world's most failed nation-states, second only to war-torn Somalia. David Van Reybrouck's Congo: The Epic History of a People traces the history of this devastated nation from the beginnings of the slave trade through the arrival of Sir Henry Morton Stanley, the ivory and rubber booms, colonization, the struggle for independence, and the three decades of Mobutu's brutal rule. Van Reybrouck also examines the civil war--the world's deadliest conflict since the Second World War. Still raging today after seventeen years, the Congolese war is driven, in part, by the demand for the rare-earth minerals required to make cell phones.

Van Reybrouck has balanced hundreds of interviews with meticulous historical research to construct a many-dimensional portrait of the rich and convoluted history of Congo. Taking pains to seek out the Congolese perspective on the country's history, Van Reybrouck creates a panoramic canvas wherein the child soldiers whom he encounters in the eastern rebel territories talk candidly about their choices and misfortunes, and where elderly Congolese--some of them more than one hundred years old--reminisce about their lives in a country where the average life expectancy has dropped to forty-five.

Vast in scope yet eminently readable, both penetrating and deeply moving, Congo does for Africa what Robert Hughes's masterful and novelistic The Fatal Shore did for Australia. Van Reybrouck takes a deeply humane approach to political history, focusing squarely on the Congolese perspective and returning a nation's history to its people. Published to rave reviews in Belgium and the Netherlands in 2010, Congo has now been gracefully translated by the exceptional Sam Garrett, most recently the translator of Herman Koch's bestselling The Dinner.

--The Christian Science Monitor

David Van Reybrouck was born in Flanders. He read archeology and philosophy at the universities of Leuven and Cambridge and holds a doctorate from Leiden. He was a visiting scholar in Barcelona and Paris and a postdoctoral research fellow in the history department of Leuven. His essays and reportages have been published in most well known newspapers and magazines of Belgium and the Netherlands. As well as being a literary non-fiction writer (The Plague, Facing Belgium, A Plea for Populism), Van Reybrouck is an acclaimed playwright. Next to that, fascinated by the visual arts, Van Reybrouck has collaborated in book projects with leading photographers such as Stephan Vanfleteren (Belgium, 2007) and Carl De Keyzer (Congo (belge), 2009), as well as the painter/sculptor Koenraad Tinel (Scheisseimer, 2009). He was a writer in residence in Amsterdam and Wassenaar. Over the years, Van Reybrouck has traveled extensively throughout Africa. In May 2010, he finally published Congo: A History, an ambitious and absorbing history of Africa's most devastated country. He lives in Brussels.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780062200129
ISBN 10	0062200127
Title	Congo
Author	David Van Reybrouck
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Year published	2015-02-17
Number of pages	656
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable