King Leopold's Ghost

Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize, King Leopold's Ghost is the true and haunting account of Leopold's brutal regime and its lasting effect on a ruined nation. With an introduction by award-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver. In the late nineteenth century, a time when Africa was being parcelled among European powers, King Leopold of Belgium seized vast, untapped territories around the Congo River. Under his brutal regime, resources were plundered, natives oppressed and populations halved. Amidst the corruption, Leopold maintained a façade of a compassionate leader. In King Leopold's Ghost, author Adam Hochschild introduces us to a group of missionaries and idealists who, upon their arrival in Africa, found themselves in the middle of a horrifying holocaust. Their courage to stand against Leopold shines a light on this often overlooked chapter of history. A devastating piece of African history, King Leopold's Ghost explores the grave cost paid by those silenced by colonial terror. 'All the tension and drama that one would expect in a good novel' - Robert Harris, author of Fatherland

Adam Hochschild teaches writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. He lives in San Francisco with his wife. He is the author of Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 and King Leopold's Ghost: a Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa which won the Duff Cooper Prize in the UK, the Lionel Gelber Prize in Canada and was a finalist for the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award in the United States.