_King Leopold’s Ghost_ by Adam Hochschild
Last month I joined the Book Club of the AWN (American Women’s Network) where I have been spending a lot of my time being active in meeting people and other things. While I never in my life expected that I would become a “book club lady”, I did decide that I was going to try new activities in areas that I am both interested in and new to me.
So, our book for September when I joined was this one. Initially, I found it interesting and a horrifying story of what went on in the Congo. Of course I have heard speckled stories, but this is the first time that it was written out in black & white (literally!). However, this also meant that it took me some time to get through it as it is a fairly detailed ‘history’ book, which is not generally my area of interest. Still, I plowed through and took a bit more than a month to complete, but as it was myย first book of the club, they did not mind that I had no finished before our first meeting. ๐
This is the story of King Leopold of Belgium’s obsession with conquering land initially in the interest of Belgium, but then for his own personal ego boost. He worked politically, economically and personally to get others to do whatever it took to make him rich and memorable in a new “empty” territory. However, no one seemed to think of the Congolese as people. It was truly sickening what went on there and the author does a decent job of blaming all people – not just the Belgians – for the atrocities that occurred. He also directed our attention to the fact that these kinds of things still happen in current days….
Therefore, not exactly, an uplifting story to contend with, but interesting all the same. This is the good part of being part of a book club, right? I am being introduced to new stories that I might never have heard of let alone pick up to read. ๐
~T ๐
