Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it--from garden seeds to Scripture--is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic... (more)

The Poisonwood BibleBarbara Kingsolver, Damian Alou

The Poisonwood Bible

by Barbara Kingsolver, Damian Alou

La autora des suroeste de Estados Unidos nos trae una novela de pasión, y de tragedia con un paisaje bello e inesperado. Una selección de Oprah para su club de lectores. Un bestseller de toda clase.

Heart of Darkness

by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was first published in 1899 in serial form in London’s Blackwood’s Magazine. Loosely based on Conrad’s firsthand experience of rescuing a company agent from a remote station in the heart of the Congo, the novel is considered a literary bridge between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With its modern literary approach to questions such as the ambiguous nature of good and... (more)

Congo

by Justine Korman, Ron Fontes, John Patrick Shanley

Deep in the African rain forest, near the legendary ruins of the Lost City of Zinj, an expedition of eight American geologists is mysteriously and brutally killed in a matter of minutes. Ten thousand miles away, Karen Ross, the Congo Project Supervisor, watches a gruesome video transmission of the aftermath: a camp destroyed, tents crushed and torn, equipment scattered in the mud alongside dead bodies -- all... (more)

King Leopold's Ghost

A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

by Adam Hochschild

In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. Heroic efforts... (more)

Blood River

by Tim Butcher

A compulsively readable account of a journey to the Congo — a country virtually inaccessible to the outside world — vividly told by a daring and adventurous journalist. Ever since Stanley first charted its mighty river in the 1870s, the Congo has epitomized the dark and turbulent history of a failed continent. However, its troubles only served to increase the interest of Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher,... (more)

Blood River

by Tim Butcher

Published to rave reviews in the United Kingdom and named a Richard & Judy Book Club selection—the only work of nonfiction on the 2008 list— Blood River is the harrowing and audacious story of Tim Butcher's journey in the Congo and his retracing of renowned explorer H. M. Stanley's famous 1874 expedition in which he mapped the Congo River. When Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to Africa in... (more)

The House at Sugar Beach: A Memoir

by Helene Cooper

Helene Cooper is "Congo," a descendant of two Liberian dynasties -- traced back to the first ship of freemen that set sail from New York in 1820 to found Monrovia. Helene grew up at Sugar Beach, a twenty-two-room mansion by the sea. Her childhood was filled with servants, flashy cars, a villa in Spain, and a farmhouse up-country. It was also an African childhood, filled with knock foot games and hot pepper soup,... (more)

A Bend in the River

by V. S. Naipaul

'Brilliant and terrifying' - "Observer". I had to be the man who was doing well and more than well, the man whose drab shop concealed some bigger operation that made millions. I had to be the man who had planned it all, who had come to the destroyed town at the bend in the river because he had foreseen the rich future. 'Salim, the narrator, is a young man from an Indian family of traders long resident on the coast... (more)

In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo

In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo

by Michela Wrong

Known as "the Leopard," the president of Zaire for thirty-two years, Mobutu Sese Seko, showed all the cunning of his namesake -- seducing Western powers, buying up the opposition, and dominating his people with a devastating combination of brutality and charm. While the population was pauperized, he plundered the country's copper and diamond resources, downing pink champagne in his jungle palace like some... (more)

A Burnt-Out Case (Twentieth Century Classics)

A Burnt-Out Case (Twentieth Century Classics)

by Graham Greene

Querry, a world-famous architect, is the victim of an attack of indifference, no longer finding meaning in art or pleasure in life. Arriving anonymously at a Congo leper village, he loses himself in work for the lepers. As he helps the lepers, so he approaches a self-cure.

No Mercy: A Journey Into the Heart of the Congo

No Mercy: A Journey Into the Heart of the Congo

by Redmond O'Hanlon

Intrepid traveler Redmond O'Hanlon embarks on a literary journey fraught with humor, discovery, and terror in the People's Republic of the Congo, as he searches for the legendary dinosaur of Lake Tele. 43 photos. 3 maps. 19 engravings.

Tintin in the Congo (The Adventures of Tintin)

Tintin in the Congo (The Adventures of Tintin)

by Herge

The Catastrophist

by Ronan Bennett

Short-listed for the Whitbread Novel Award, The Catastrophist is a haunting novel set in the politically charged landscape of the Belgian Congo just before independence. At its heart is the passion between novelist James Gillespie and the fiery idealistic journalist Inès, whom he follows to Africa as their affair begins to fray. They are as unlike as lovers can be; he is willfully apolitical and desperate for... (more)

Reader's Digest Natural Wonders Of The WorldReader's Digest Association

Reader's Digest Natural Wonders Of The World

by Reader's Digest Association

CongoMichael Crichton

Congo

by Michael Crichton

A Burnt-out CaseGraham Greene

A Burnt-out Case

by Graham Greene

King Leopold's Ghost

by Adam Hochschild

Heart of Darkness (A Norton Critical Edition)

Heart of Darkness (A Norton Critical Edition)

by Joseph Conrad

The Fourth Edition is again based on Robert Kimbrough’s meticulously re-edited text. Missing words have been restored and the entire novel has been repunctuated in accordance with Conrad’s style. The result is the first published version of Heart of Darkness that allows readers to hear Marlow’s voice as Conrad heard it when he wrote the story. "Backgrounds and Contexts" provides readers with a generous... (more)

King Solomon's mines

by H. Rider Haggard

When first published, in 1885, King Solomon’s Mines was an enormous popular success. The narrative follows the explorations of Allan Quatermain, a fortune hunter who travels to Africa in search of ancient treasures and a lost fellow explorer. Written as an adventure story, the novel is also a late-Victorian imperial romance that illuminates the politics of British imperialist capitalism in 1870s and 1880s South... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: congo

by Barbara Kingsolver

by Barbara Kingsolver, Damian Alou

by Joseph Conrad

by Justine Korman, Ron Fontes, John Patrick Shanley

A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

by Adam Hochschild

by Tim Butcher

by Tim Butcher

by Helene Cooper

by V. S. Naipaul

by Michela Wrong

by Graham Greene

by Redmond O'Hanlon

by Herge

by Ronan Bennett

by Reader's Digest Association

by Michael Crichton

by Graham Greene

by Adam Hochschild

by Joseph Conrad

by H. Rider Haggard