A compulsively readable account of a country now virtually inaccessible to outsiders, and one journalist's daring journey through it.

When war correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to cover Africa in 2000, he became obsessed with an idea: recreating H.M. Stanley's famous nineteenth-century trans-Africa expedition, alone. Despite warnings that his plan was "suicidal," he set out for the Congo's eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots. Travelling by motorbike, dugout canoe, and whatever else he could find, and helped along by a cast of unlikely characters, he retraced the footsteps of the great Victorian explorers. Butcher's journey was a remarkable feat. The story of the Congo itself, told here with skill and vivid detail, is more remarkable still.

"A masterpiece" — John Le Carré
"Extraordinary, audacious, completely enthralling" — William Boyd
"A remarkable marriage of travelogue and history, which deserves to make Tim Butcher a star for his prose, as well as his courage" — Max Hastings

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