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

Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize, Adam Hochschild''s King Leopold''s Ghost is the true and haunting account of Leopold'' s brutal regime and its lasting effect on a ruined nation. In the late nineteenth century, when the great powers in Europe were tearing Africa apart and seizing ownership of land for themselves, King Leopold of Belgium took hold of the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. In his devastatingly barbarous colonization of this area, Leopold stole its rubber and ivory, pummelled its people and set up a ruthless regime that would reduce the population by half. While he did all this, he carefully constructed an image of himself as a deeply feeling humanitarian. King Leopold''s Ghost is the inspiring and deeply moving account of a handful of missionaries and other idealists who travelled to Africa and unwittingly found themselves in the middle of a gruesome holocaust. Instead of turning away, these brave few chose to stand up against Leopold. Adam Hochschild brings life to this largely untold story and, crucially, casts blame on those responsible for this atrocity. ''All the tension and drama that one would expect in a good novel'' - Robert Harris, author of Fatherland

Product details

• Authors: Adam Hochschild
• Publisher: Picador Uk
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: from age 18
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 07.11.2024
• EAN: 9781035038817
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3503881-7
• No. of pages: 416
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 197 mm x 26 mm
• Series: Picador Classic; Collection; Picador Collection
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, HISTORY / Modern / 19th Century, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Slavery, c 1800 to c 1900, Colonialism & imperialism, The Holocaust, Later 19th century c 1850 to c 1899, Central Africa, Colonialism and imperialism, Slavery & abolition of slavery, Congo, Slavery and abolition of slavery