Reviews - Blown Away | The StoryGraph

Blown Away by Adam Hochschild, Adam Hochschild

1.28k reviews for:

Devastating. Should be required reading. Some of the incidents described made me feel sick. And the chapter on the "great forgetting" - and the fact that, indeed, I had almost no idea about the extent of colonial cruelty in the Congo; that, indeed, I was another American high school student who read Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" as if it was ahistorical... Really horrible stuff. Indeed, the post-colonial stuff - the murder of Patrice Lumumba by CIA-funded agents, the subsequent Leopold-esque reign of Mobutu - it's just miserable. I guess I knew this stuff in a very peripheral, superficial way; I had never thought about it or investigated it. Now that I have... damn. As I said, should be required reading.

Edited to add: On a somewhat lighter note, this book is begging to be made into a film. Michael Sheen was BORN to play Stanley, in all his insecure exuberance and cruelty. They're both even Welsh! Perhaps Clive Owen as E.D. Morel? Stephen Fry as Sir Roger Casement? Denzel Washington as William Henry Sheppard? Ian McKellan as Leopold? I'm only half-joking - cinema is one of the most powerful ways to tell history, and the fact that this book is, yes, a bestseller, but not part of high school history curricula is something that HAS to change.

lnmiller2's review against another edition

4.5

dark informative reflective medium-paced

danielpreston1993's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense slow-paced

A deep insight into one of histories biggest and maybe most silenced conspiracies. Worth a read.

bigenk's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark informative slow-paced

No doubt it's important when writing a book about a colonial genocide like this that the author makes clear the viewpoint through which we are viewing it, and what the long term consequences are. Hochschild minces no words in lamenting the lack of Congolese voices we have during this period, between Leopold's entry into the Congo during the 1870's until after his death in 1909, and it's in no small part because of this that the facts of Leopold's reign have gone largely unnoticed or received indifferently until well past the turn of the 21st century. Hochschild is also sober about the outcomes of the humanitarian movement that sprung up in the late 1890's, recognizing the tangible impact it had on stifling the more hardcore crimes against Congolese communities, and at the same time acknowledging the continued state of colonization that the area experienced until it's independence from Belgium 1960, when it was cast off into a totally different if no less dangerous jungle of global politics, completely unprepared to become solvent as a nation.

The sheer amount of wealth extracted from the region by colonial powers - whether by ivory, rubber, or human beings themselves - through the use of forced labor and terror is staggering. Like icing on a shit cake, this wealth was never returned to the place and the people it was taken from, in this case mostly ending up immortalized in the monuments, plazas, and chateaus that Leopold constructed and even now serves as the fodder that tourists go to Belgium in search of. What a strange case this was, when it comes to European colonialism. The brutality is much the same, but I'm unaware of another royalty that was able to subvert his way into personally controlling and benefiting from such an atrocity, all the while under the guise of humanitarianism. In this way, Hochschild describes why Leopold's reign is notable amongst a dark sea of similar crimes against humanity.

Hochschild strikes a fine balance between narrative storytelling and factual accounting. This is really my ideal mix of the two; enough narrative to keep me engaged through its density, but enough reality to make me feel like I'm actually learning something, that my time isn't being wasted by prose that's better suited to a work of fiction. In my estimation one of the hallmarks of really good works of non-fiction are also the points of interest that get churned up that the author doesn't have to space to fully explore, that beg you for further research. These little bits of gravy are plentiful here, Roger Casement, E.D. Morel, and George Washington Williams among them, not to mention the numerous African cultures mentioned.

liluzismurf's review against another edition

4.25

dark informative sad slow-paced

This was a harrowing and sad book which was excellent in helping me understand the history of the DR Congo. It challenged me to do more reading on the DRC and the crisis it is currently facing today in terms of cobalt mining.

The book was very readable and in some parts read more like a novel. It had a little too much focus on the lives of big colonial players than I was hoping for, but I also understand that unfortunately there are very few recorded accounts of the lives of the Congolese people at that time. The book is also largely an account of the international human rights movement associated with the Congo rubber terror. I didn’t agree with the way the author interpreted or portrayed certain issues but overall he did a great job truly humanising the people of central Africa at the time, not just as victims but as people with agency in complex and coherent families and societies. Overall this book was challenging and disturbing at times to get through, but very necessary.