Modern Africa travel writing.

If you are remotely interested in Africa then I strongly recommend Blood River where Tim Butcher followed HM Stanleys coast to coast journey from East to west Africa including travelling down the Congo river. The stand out impression was a country going backwards, where children rarely see motor vehicles or books that their grand parents saw regularly.

I have also just finished reading Chasing the Devil by Tim Butcher an account of his walk through Liberia and Sierra Leone in the footsteps of Graham Green. Similar in style to his earlier Blood River the book focuses more on Africa’s recent history with the bloody civil wars. However there are interesting flashbacks to Liberia past as one of the few non colonised African countries.

There are also more modern references to contemporary cannibalism and ritual murders which hit the news again recently (BBC news report)