When Tim Butcher became Africa's correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, he realised that it had been the same newpaper that had sent Henry Morton Stanley to chart the Congo River in the 1870s. The author's mother had also travelled through the Congo in 1958 and he had grown up with the souvenirs and pictures that his mother had taken gracing the walls of his childhood home. Despite being told that it couldn't be done and the impossible challenges and dangers he would face Tim became obsessed with trying to recreate Stanley's famous expedition.

He describes his journey as ordeal travel and even reading it isn't for the faint-hearted. His adventure is extraordinary and he also uses his journey through the Congo to tell the story of its history and its disturbing present.

More than anything, what stood out for me was that this is a country which is moving backwards. There had been modernity, but no longer. He encountered a grandfather who could remember tourists travelling around the country, but the motorbike that Tim was moving quickly through jungle tracks on was the first that his grandchildren had seen. The roads and infrastructure that had been there at independence are now eroded and swallowed up by jungle. The Congo is a vast country with enormous wealth in the form of natural resources, but there is no order. The safest place for so many people is to repeatedly flee into the jungle while all their belongings are destroyed by whichever rebel group.

This is a fascinating book and hugely readable. ( )

Review written May 2008: We had this for our book club this month, and Tim Butcher is coming to our Travel Writing Festival in Lismore next month so we will have the opportunity to talk to him. People had mixed opinions, some liked the book but not the author, while others found it riveting. I fell into the latter category as I found it fascinating that a country had regressed so much since the colonial period that it seemed to endorse colonialism as an option. Of course rational thinking shows that exploitation of a people or country can be done by anyone including the citizens, if power abuses occur or have the opportunity to thrive. The total anarchy is well presented, showing the near impossibility of managing a country so vast with no infrastructure, where the communications are so weak, and the book provokes far more questions than answers. I was reminded of a book I read whose name escapes me about the boats brought overland from the Cape to Lake Tanganyika to support the British war effort in WW1 against the Germans who scuttled their lake boat, the Graf Gotzen I think it was called, which is now plying the lake as the Liemba after it was refloated years later. Michael Palin travels on it in Pole to Pole. That book was fascinating in the efforts people made to overcome nature's obstacles, like getting boats to a lake a thousand miles from the sea! I google earthed the Congo river after reading Blood River and tracked the length of it and loved looking at the photos people posted of the various places he passed through. The bit from Kinshasa to the sea was the least known to me and I loved the account of his journey. It was quite a journalistic approach but no less enjoyable for that. I read The Catastrophist and The Poisonwood Bible and loved them so this was a nice counterpoint to those. I lived in Tanzania for years and enjoyed many a sunset over Lake Tanganyika from Kigoma looking over to the mysterious horizon of then Zaire with its shadowy mountains and wonderful kwasa kwasa music. ( )

Brings to life all the ills of Africa under Africans ( )

Tim Butcher, a journalist for The Daily Telegraph decides to recreate H.M. Stanley's famous expedition in the 1870's. (Stanley had been also sponsored by the same newspaper!) He was also curious to see the country that his mother had visited in the 1950's as a tourist. He was told that by just about everyone he contacted that the journey was impossible, but against the odds he manages to enlist the help of aid workers (including a pygmy human rights activist and the Malaysian commander of a vessel working for the UN) and others. Each stage of the journey is uncertain, and he's constantly in danger of his life and in great discomfort. But he does manage in the end to find the transport he needs (motorcycles, dugouts, a UN barge) and the journey continues. It's impossible not to salute his courage.

Blood River : A Journey into Africa's Broken Heart is a fascinating account, not just because it takes us into a part of the world we wouldn't normally venture into and lets us share the journey (from our comfy armchairs!), but also for the historical perspectives which are woven into the narrative.

In the space of half a century, Congo has gone completely backwards - it is not "a developing country", or an "underdeveloped country", so much as an "un-developing country", going backwards so fast that almost nothing remains of the infrastructure left under Belgian rule due to the greed and incompetence of its leaders. It's a terrifying portrait of how quickly things can unravel. You also come to realise that putting things right isn't a matter of throwing financial aid at the problems, but in establishing the rule of law.

It's impossible not to really pity the ordinary people of this failed country, but that there is such potential for economic growth (minerals, fertile land) turns this missed opportunity into a grand tragedy.

The book was chosen as one of the reads for the Richard and Judy bookclub and of course made the shortlist for this year's Samuel Johnson Prize. ( )