So, Ive just finished King Leopold's Ghost and I can honestly say that this book and not only life-changing content on nearly every page, but the manner in which it was written is truly exquisite. Hochschild's ability to write historical non-fiction in the style of a novel is remarkable...although I do enjoy history I would never, ever voluntarily read a "history book" so naturally I had some doubt about King Leopold's Ghost in the beginning but literally by the first 5 or 10 pages I was hooked!
Obviously the content of Hochschild's work is devastating, but I really think that because he manages to tell this story with such fluid ease, that even though the things I was reading were perhaps some of the most grotesque things I have ever read before; I still appreciated the style of Hochschild's writing as well as his respect for the African culture while he paints his all to vivid depiction of life during the colonial age.
Some aspects of King Leopold's Ghost that I loved were the pictures, and Hochschild's ability to introduce different figures in history as though they all worked together to tell this story of the past; the small details included about each character make the reader feel as though they are really getting acquainted with the life happenings of each character as well as simultaneously getting to know them on a personal level. I also really enjoyed the photos inserted about 120 pages in (right when I was starting to get tired from reading...), and they instantly reminded me just how real this colonization was. Its easy while reading Hochschild's novel to get lost in the descriptions and little anecdotes and forget how very real and horrific all of this really was as well was the impact still evident today. The photographs were a big deal to me; that's when I really started to grasp the morbid intensity of this occurrence and just how helpless the Africans were (despite any of their other skills or knowledge, it was impossible to defeat the Europeans since they had been manipulating the Africans essentially since their first encounter and on).
I really enjoyed the novel itself as well as the class discussion in Tuesday, its a really interesting experience to read this novel in a group since the content is so disturbing and basically no one knows about this event in history...I like getting to listen to everyone's thoughts and interpretations as I try to sort through my own complex feeling regarding King Leopold's Ghost.
2 comments:
haha I'm a history major and I wasn't even hooked after the first few pages, you must have a gift. You're right about all the details, I can only imagine what kind of research he had to do to finish this book. Well, his footnotes are pages long so I suppose we can see how much research he did.
thanks for your input...its nice to see that my gift doesnt go unnoticed
Post a Comment