Congo: The Epic History of a People - Hardcover

Reybrouck, David Van

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 000756290X ISBN 13: 9780007562909

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2014

Synopsis

Epic, yet eminently readable and profoundly moving, the winner of the Prix Médicis essai 2012 and the AKO Literature Prize traces the fate of one of the world's most devastated countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo.

With a span of several hundred years and an enormous cast of characters, ‘Congo’ chronicles the most dramatic episodes of the nation’s history, the people and events that have determined Congo’s development – from the slave trade to the ivory and rubber booms; from the arrival of Henry Morton Stanley and his meeting with Dr Livingstone to the brutal regime of Belgium’s King Leopold II; from the struggle for independence to Mobutu's exploitative rule; and from Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s world famous ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ to the civil war over natural resources that began in 1996 and still rages today.

David Van Reybrouck interweaves his own family's history with the voices of a diverse range of individuals – charismatic dictators, feuding warlords, child-soldiers, elderly, female smugglers, and many in the African diaspora of Europe and China – to offer a deeply humane approach to political history, focusing squarely on the Congolese perspective in an attempt to return a nation's history to its people.

About this title

About the Author

David Van Reybrouck is an award-winning author, acclaimed playwright, reporter, and poet who studied in Leuven and Cambridge and holds a doctorate from Leiden University. He has travelled extensively throughout Africa and has been actively involved in organizing literary workshops for Congolese playwrights in Kinshasa and Goma. He lives in Brussels.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 000756290X
• ISBN 13: 9780007562909
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 656