Blood River by Tim Butcher

I’m delighted to have my review of Tim Butcher’s Blood River appear in today’s Wall Street Journal, under the title Solo in the Congo. It’s the first time I’ve had the opportunity to write for the Journal.

Blood River is the story of how Tim Butcher, a journalist for London’s Daily Telegraph, set out to follow the course of Henry Morton Stanley’s 1874 expedition across Africa. Here’s an excerpt from the review:

As the author jounces over rugged forest paths on a motorbike, he comes upon a settlement where human bones lie scattered, “white among the green undergrowth.” Yet more unsettling than what he sees is the knowledge of all that is hidden or unknown. As roads crumble and people hide in the forest, each village is cut off from the rest. When Mr. Butcher asks about a local massacre where thousands died, no one seems to know about it. “There have been many attacks and many massacres,” one man says. “When it happens we flee into the bush, but nobody ever knows the details.”

The recent book “The World Without Us,” by Alan Weisman, asks us to imagine what the Earth would be like without people—if no one were around to tend the power plants and pump out the subways and repair the roads. The Congo provides a glimpse of that world.