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Chasing The Devil: The Search For Africa's Fighting Spirit (2010)

by Tim Butcher(Favorite Author)

4 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0701183608 (ISBN13: 9780701183608)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Chatto & Windus

review 1: A very well done travelogue going deep into the hinterland of Sierra Leone and Liberia, trying to retrace the steps of a 1930s book by Graham Greene. Butcher does most of the journey on foot, as Greene did, and finds how little has changed in parts of Africa and how little development has happened in areas wracked by decades of war. These were countries far off the beaten path, and the areas within the country even further off, and I enjoyed as always learning of these areas and their unique histories.
review 2: Using Graham Greene's 1935 trek with his Cousin Barbara across Sierra Leone & Liberia as a reference point, Tim Butcher engages the same formula as he did in his previous book, Blood River, in which he re-traced the footsteps of VIctorian-era explorer... more Stanley's epic trip across the Congo. Blood River was a towering accomplishment of adventure travel writing that hooked me on the genre of African exploration and led me to seek out further detailed reading on the Congo and it's history, notably the mesmerizing King Leopold's Ghost.Chasing the Devil once again hits the mark for Butcher. Combining a no-nonsense journalistic style with the best of travel writing and adventure storytelling, Butcher entertains with a mixture of anecdotes and historical and political insights into the West African countries of Sierra Leone & Liberia.Butcher' Devils are a combination of bush village magic men, Ancient tribal spiritualism, frightening tropical diseases and blood diamonds to name but a few, but above all the scarred and haunting memories from decades of conflict spawned by generations of incompetence, waste and corruption. The author is on a quest to gain an understanding of the origins of the pure evil that gave rise to so much barbarism, ritualistic cruelty and Human suffering. In essence, he is seeking out West Africa's heart of darkness. Butcher's demons are also the memories of his Jornalist colleagues killed in the line of duty, whose tragic deaths he seeks some sort of closure for by gaining an understanding of the origins of the conflict which they died covering.Graham Greene, in whose footsteps Butcher meticulously follows, feared boredom and mediocrity. Butcher's resulting work is certainly no mediocre travel book. less

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