King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

by Adam Hochschild
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

by Adam Hochschild

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Overview

 "An enthralling story . . . A work of history that reads like a novel." — Christian Science Monitor
“As Hochschild’s brilliant book demonstrates, the great Congo scandal prefigured our own times . . . This book must be read and reread.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review

 
In the late nineteenth century, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium carried out a brutal plundering of the territory surrounding the Congo River. Ultimately slashing the area’s population by ten million, he still managed to shrewdly cultivate his reputation as a great humanitarian. A tale far richer than any novelist could invent, King Leopold’s Ghost is the horrifying account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who defied Leopold: African rebel leaders who fought against hopeless odds and a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure but unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust and participants in the twentieth century’s first great human rights movement.

A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780547525730
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 09/03/1999
Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
Format: eBook
Pages: 416
Sales rank: 50,828
File size: 20 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

About The Author

ADAM HOCHSCHILD is the author of eleven books. King Leopold’s Ghost was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as was To End All Wars. His Bury the Chains was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN USA Literary Award. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Hometown:

San Francisco, California

Date of Birth:

October 5, 1942

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Education:

A.B., Harvard College, 1963

Read an Excerpt

As with any traumatic piece of history, the roots of this story lie far back in time, and its reverberations still sound today. But for me a central vantage point, an incandescent pivotal moment that illuminates long decades before and after, is a young man's flash of moral recognition.

What People are Saying About This

Paul Theroux

King Leopold's Ghost is a remarkable achievement, hugely satisfying on many levels. It overwhelmed me in the way Heart of Darkness did when I first read it.

From the Publisher

"An enthralling story, full of fascinating characters, intense drama, high adventure, deceitful manipulations, courageous truth-telling, and splendid moral fervor . . .A work of history that reads like a novel." Christian Science Monitor

"As Hochschild's brilliant book demonstrates, the great Congo scandal prefigured our own times . . . This book must be read and reread."—Neal Ascherson The Los Angeles Times

"A vivid, novelistic narrative that makes the reader acutely aware of the magnitude of the horror perpetrated by King Leopold and his minions." The New York Times

"King Leopold’s Ghost is a remarkable achievement, hugely satisfying on many levels. It overwhelmed me in the way Heart of Darkness did when I first read it—and for precisely the same reasons: as a revelation of the horror that had been hidden in the Congo."—Paul Theroux

"Carefully researched and vigorously told, King Leopold’s Ghost does what good history always does—expands the memory of the human race." The Houston Chronicle

Nadine Gordimer

Hochschild's outstanding study, unmatched by any other work on the Congo, reveals how all Europe -- and the USA -- contributed to the making of King Leopold's holocaust of the Congolese people.

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