Chasing the Devil: The Search for Africa's Fighting Spirit - Hardcover

Butcher, Tim

4.12

1,868 ratings by Goodreads

9780701183608: Chasing the Devil: The Search for Africa's Fighting Spirit

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701183608 ISBN 13: 9780701183608

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2010

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For many years Sierra Leone and Liberia have been too dangerous to travel through, bedevilled by a uniquely brutal form of violence from which sprang many of Africa's cruellest contemporary icons - child soldiers, prisoner mutilation, blood diamonds. With their wars officially over, Tim Butcher sets out on a journey across both countries, trekking for 350 miles through remote rainforest and malarial swamps. Just as he followed H M Stanley through the Congo - a journey described in his bestseller Blood River - this time he pursues a trail blazed by Graham Greene in 1935 and immortalised in the travel classic Journey Without Maps. Greene took 26 bearers, a case of scotch, and hammocks in which he and his cousin Barbara were carried. Tim walks every blistering inch to gain an extraordinary ground-level view of a troubled and overlooked region.

As a journalist in Africa, Tim came to know both countries well although the wars made trips to the jungle hinterland far too risky. This is where he now heads, exploring how rebel groups thrived in the bush for so long and whether the devil of war has truly been chased away. He encounters other 'devils', masked figures guarding the spiritual secrets of jungle communities. Some are no more threatening than schoolmasters but others are much more sinister, relying on ritual cannibalism as a source of their magical power. Tim encounters these devils on an epic journey that demands courage, doggedness and good fortune.

Chasing the Devil is a dramatic travel book touching on one of the most fraught parts of the globe at a unique moment in its history. Weaving history and anthropology with personal narrative - as well as new discoveries about Greene - it is as exciting as it is enlightening.

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Review:

"Personal reflections and vivid historical vignettes linked to the grimness of contemporary events. Another masterpiece from a writer of enviable skill."--Dervla Murphy

"Part explorer-adventurer, part war correspondent, part literary sleuth, Butcher has also embarked on a remarkable writing career... An eye for illuminating detail and a nose for the stench of corruption and vice equal to Graham Greene himself."--Andrew Roberts

"An inspirational account of humanity's wonderful spirit to survive and proof that, in Tim Butcher, Africa has a worthy chronicler."--Archbishop Desmond Tutu

"This is a very fine... travel book... his practical homage reminds us just how great, perceptive, and still relevant Greene is"--Financial Times

"Butcher writes with candour and humour."--Evening Standard

"A brave... admirable book."--Sunday Times

"Butcher's book is packed with incident... fascinating, harrowing and eventful"--The Independent

"This an engaging, well-written book. Anyone who enjoyed Blood River will enjoy this."--Chris Mullin, The Daily Telegraph

"A former foreign correspondent with an explorer’s heart ... Tim Butcher has a respect and affection for West Africa that is genuine and touching ... He brings out the exuberance of wit of its people, tries to empathise with their suffering and understand their demons – temporal and spiritual."--Daily Mail

Book Description:

The bestselling author of Blood River ventures into Sierra Leone and Liberia in the footsteps of Graham Greene... Travelogue, history and audacious adventure.

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