Mr Butcher, is a much stronger and more adventurous person than I am. I read this book because I really liked the authors previous book, Blood River.
This was a long-listed book for this year's Orwell prize. A fascinating book for anyone who is interested in Africa I admit I bought it before I even knew WHAT part of Africa it was about because Butcher writes so well. The author writes with empathy and thoughtfulness - this isn't another white European looking at the natives and describing how exotic they are, but a real travel saga in which Butcher ponders the ultimately similar experiences of Liberia and Sierra Leone, both originally founded as havens for 'rescued' or freed slaves, one of which became a colony and one of which remained independent. But there are also the local ghosts, a reflection not only of the war but the local bush religious cults that dominate life in the hinterland of Liberia - and may explain the cannibalism that Butcher heard of. His own personal ghosts are those of two colleagues killed in Sierra Leone in the 1990s - a fate that Butcher realized could have been his own, as he dashed from one war zone to another.
But Butcher is more interested in what has happened over the long haul - in the seven decades that have elapsed since Greene made his trek - and in chasing ghosts of the literal and rhetorical kind. While not quite as compelling as Butcher's last saga of African derring-do (he retraced the voyage of Stanley across Africa, through the heart of the Congo), it's a fascinating glimpse at some of the countries that have been wracked by conflict in last 30 years or so and are still teetering on the verge of being failed states. So it wasn't until that regime collapsed that Butcher, at the time a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, sets out on a trek through Sierra Leone and into Liberia, following in the footsteps of Graham Greene, as chronicled in Journey Without Maps. It's hard to dislike a book that kicks off with the line "I can clearly remember receiving my first death threat." Especially when it only gets better from there.For Tim Butcher, author of Chasing the Devil, that death threat came from Liberia, when his reporting about the possibility that the then-president's supporters might be committing acts of cannibalism unexpectedly peeved the powers that be.
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