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Chargement... Facing the Congo: A Modern-Day Journey into the Heart of Darkness (2000)par Jeffrey Tayler
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. The premise sounds really exciting; a white man wants to canoe down the Congo River through the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the Atlantic. And while there are some exciting moments on his trip, as a whole "Facing the Congo" was a bit flat. The set-up, explaining how dangerous the trip would be, the author taking a large commuter ship up the Congo (and his interactions with other passengers) and organising the trip all felt like the book was leading up into something great but the actual pirogue trip wasn't the pay off I was hoping for. I was tempted to simply rate it a single star. Around 2000-2004 I read several books about Africa, ranging from contemporary conflicts to the legacies of colonialism, texts like Philip Gourevich's We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed, Scott Peterson's Me Against My Brother and The Zanzibar Chest by Aidan Hartley. Mr. Tayler's book shares only a locale with those masterful narratives. He is a poor writer. He incessantly moans and offers no context nor erudition. I had seen the book before at the library and found it yesterday for a dollar. Maybe I regarded the situation as antipodal to Vollmann's experience above the Arctic Cicrle. Whatever. It was a mistake. What is it with modern travelogues by people who don't accomplish their missions? This was like the third book like this that I read this year. Okay, sure, Tayler's mission to paddle down the incredibly dangerous and volatile Congo was stupid in the first place, but still. Do it or don't, you pansy. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
At thirty-three one's direction in life should be clear, and mine was not.' In search of some direction, or at least a new challenge, Jeffrey Tayler gave up his day job of opening rejection letters from publishers and went exploring. Having always been fascinated by Africa and the great age of Victorian exploration he went to Kinshasa in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and found a boat to take him up-river to Kisangani, deep in the heart of the jungle. Not content with that, he then bought a pirogue (a kind of canoe), hired a guide and set out to paddle the 1,000 miles back to Kinshasa. A personal journey, an intrepid voyage, an exceptionally well-written travelogue: FACING THE CONGO is all these things and more. A wonderfully vivid and exciting read for armchair adventurers everywhere. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)916.7510434History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography of and travel in Africa East Africa Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa); Rwanda & Burundi Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa)Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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A little over a decade prior to my visit, Jeffrey Tayler was in the DRC, or Zaire as it was then known. Like me, Mr Tayler was just into his thirties and was going through something of a crisis. He left Russia, the country he had almost settled in, as I had left Poland; he wanted to challenge himself, to see what his life was and what it meant, and for that challenge, like I would later do, he turned to Africa.
'Facing the Congo' is the story of Mr Tayler's experience in Zaire. He travelled by barge up the Congo from Kinshasa to Kisangani, from where he wished to navigate back to the capital aboard a pirogue. The journey was fraught with peril, and ends much like Geoffrey Moorhouse's classic 'The Fearful Void,' with the adventurer realising that the challenge is an insurmountable one. ( )