Congo: The compelling history and political biography of the Democratic Republic of Congo - Softcover

Van Reybrouck, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007562934 ISBN 13: 9780007562930

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2015

Synopsis

FINALIST FOR THE CUNDILL PRIZE FOR HISTORY

‘Not only deserves the description “epic”, in its true sense, but the term “masterpiece” as well’ Independent

This gripping epic tells the story of one of the world’s most critical failed nation-states: the Democratic Republic of Congo. Interweaving his own family’s history with the voices of a diverse range of individuals – charismatic dictators, feuding warlords, child soldiers, and many in the African diaspora of Europe and China – Van Reybrouck offers a deeply humane approach to political history, focusing squarely on the Congolese perspective and returning 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.

From the Back Cover

Hailed as "a monumental history . . . more exciting than any novel" (NRC Handelsblad),David van Reybrouck's rich and gripping epic, in the tradition of Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore, tells the extraordinary story of one of the world's most devastated countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Epic in scope yet eminently readable, penetrating and deeply moving, David van Reybrouck's Congo: The Epic History of a People traces the fate of one of the world's most critical, failed nation-states, second only to war-torn Somalia: the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Van Reybrouck takes us through several hundred years of history, bringing some of the most dramatic episodes in Congolese history. Here are the people and events that have impinged the Congo's development-from the slave trade to the ivory and rubber booms; from the arrival of Henry Morton Stanley to the tragic regime of King Leopold II; from global indignation to Belgian colonialism; from the struggle for independence to Mobutu's brutal rule; and from the world famous Rumble in the Jungle to the civil war over natural resources that began in 1996 and still rages today.
Van Reybrouck interweaves his own family's history with the voices of a diverse range of individuals-charismatic dictators, feuding warlords, child-soldiers, the elderly, female merchant 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 and returning a nation's history to its people.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0007562934
• ISBN 13: 9780007562930
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 656