King Leopold's Ghost : A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism

Resumen del libro

WINNER OF THE 1999 DUFF COOPER PRIZE. 'Brilliant .. this book must be read and re-read' Neal Ascherson'.

'A hundred years ago, enlightened people in the western world were outraged by a holocaust in Africa which left millions dead. Denunciations thundered from speaker's platforms around the US and Europe. One open letter to The Times was signed by 11 peers, 19 bishops and 75 MPs.

Viscount Grey, Britain's foreign secretary, declared that no overseas issue had so intensely aroused the British public for 30 years. Conan Doyle wrote a pamphlet on the Congo atrocities which sold 25,000 copies in the first week alone. Yet today not one person in a thousand could say what the fuss was all about, unless, of course, they have read this amazing book.' Tariq Ali, Financial Times 'Fascinating ...brilliant and gripping' Mail on Sunday 'An exemplary piece of history writing: urgent, vivid and compelling' Literary Review

Biografía del autor

Adam Hochschild (Nueva York, 1942) vive en San Francisco y ejerce la docencia como profesor de redacción en la Graduate School of Journalism de la Universidad de California en Berkeley, y durante el curso 1997-1998 fue profesor Fulbright en India. Ha colaborado en varias revistas norteamericanas, entre las que destacan The New Yorker,The New York Review of Books y The New York Times Magazine. Le concedieron el premio de la Academia Estadounidense de las Artes y las Letras y fue finalista del National Book Critics Circle Award. También es autor de Half the way home: A memoir of father and son, The mirror at midnight: A South African journey, The unquiet ghost: Russians remember Stalin, Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, portraits, travels, entre otros.