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4.28 AVERAGE
4.28 AVERAGE
dark
informative
reflective
A truly extraordinary story about Belgian's villainous colonization of the Congo and the heroes that fought against King Leopold's propaganda machine.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Rape, Slavery, Violence, Colonisation, War
Minor: Homophobia, Suicide, Excrement
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
dark
informative
medium-paced
Not light reading, but exceptionally well written. My only other resource for the region was The Poisonwood Bible, reading which was my impetus for wanting to learn about the area. My sister recommended this as kind of the standard text for the basics of early Congolese history.
Since this was mostly new information, many of the details have been forgotten, but I still know more than I did before, and am once again reminded of how little I know about anything in the world.
Highly recommend.
The next stop on my Congolese history tour will be Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, which my sister recommended for this interested in what went down with “Independence,” Lumumba and Mobutu.
That will be after a short break to read some books from other family members.
Since this was mostly new information, many of the details have been forgotten, but I still know more than I did before, and am once again reminded of how little I know about anything in the world.
Highly recommend.
The next stop on my Congolese history tour will be Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, which my sister recommended for this interested in what went down with “Independence,” Lumumba and Mobutu.
That will be after a short break to read some books from other family members.
This was an extremely difficult subject matter so I had to set it aside quite a bit. It straddles the line of being atrocious (due to the actual historical events) and boring.
I loved how this book was written, keeping a book about history exciting is not an easy task. Need to check if the information is correct though
Overall I think its a must read, interesting, entertaining and educating
Overall I think its a must read, interesting, entertaining and educating
I think this is very well written, but I skimmed the last third--it's such an important period of history/terror/colonization for people to know about, but it.is.brutal.
I hope hell is real simply so king Leopold can burn for the rest of time.