In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz

‘Joyous … a book that makes other journalists weep with envy’ The Economist'Provocative, touching, and sensitively written … an eloquent, brilliantly researched account’ Sunday Times

One of The Economist’s best books by foreign correspondents.

A story of grim comedy amid the apocalypse and a celebration of the sheer indestructibility of the human spirit in a nation run riot: Michela Wrong’s vision of Congo/Zaire during the Mobutu years is incisive, ironic and revelatory.

Mr Kurtz, the colonial white master, brought evil to the remote upper reaches of the Congo River. A century after Conrad’s 'Heart of Darkness' was first published, Michela Wrong revisits the Congo as the era of Mobutu Sese Seko collapses into absurdity, anarchy and corruption. Hers is a brilliant portrait of the grotesque as confusion takes over: pink lipsticked rebel soldiers mingle with tracksuited secret policemen in hotels where fin de siecle dinner parties are ploughing through hotel wine cellars rather than see bottles lost to the new regime.

Congo, Africa’s richest country in terms of its natural resources, has institutionalised kleptomania: everyone is on the take. In a country where the minimum wage has dropped to below $150 a year, the government over twenty-five years spent $250 million providing courtesy cars. Congo has a vanity nuclear reactor built on a subsiding slope and one of its uranium rods is missing…

The Mobutu reign, successor to Belgium’s failed imperial experiment in Africa, was fed by World Bank dollars and IMF loans. Having presided over unprecedented looting of the country’s wealth, Mobutu, like Kurtz, retreated deep within the jungle to his absurdly overwrought palace of marble floors and gold taps. A century on, nothing seems to have changed at the heart of Africa: it is lawless, graceless and it slaughters its own.

“'A stylish account of the absurd as well as the tragic.' Sunday Times 'This book will become a classic.' Economist”

‘A brilliant account of Africa’s most extraordinary dictator told with wry wit and delicious irony… this book will become a classic’ The Economist

‘Provocative, touching, and sensitively written … an eloquent, brilliantly researched account and a remarkably sympathetic study of a tragic land’ Sunday Times

‘Michela Wrong made the so-called ‘Heart of Darkness' much less opaque to me when I visited the Congo. She can do the same for you if you read this brave and witty book’ Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great

‘Michela Wrong nimbly balances absurdity and outrage in her portrait of Mobutu Sese Seko and the wreckage he visited – with steady Western sponsorship – on the country he called Zaire. Her book is charged with pity and terror, and with the sort of sustaining humour that she rightly admires in Mobutu’s former subjects’ Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We will be Killed With Our Families

Michela Wrong is a distinguished international journalist, and has worked as a foreign correspondent covering events across the African continent for Reuters, the BBC and the Financial Times.Based on her experiences in Africa, In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz, her first book, won the PEN James Sterne Prize for non-fiction. Her book I Didn’t Do It for You (2006) builds upon her shocking experiences, and focuses on the African nation of Eritrea.In 2015, she published Borderlines, her first novel.Michela Wrong is based in London.

'A brilliant account of Africa's most extraordinary dictator . . . This book will become a classic.' Economist A sparkling account of the rise and fall of Mobutu Sese Seko, the charismatic dictator who plundered his country's wealth and indulged a passion for pink champagne, gold jewellery and chartered Concordes. Absurdity, anarchy and corruption run riot in Michela Wrong's fascinating dissection of the Congo; a story of grim comedy amidst the apocalypse and a celebration of the sheer indestructibility of the human spirit.

A story of grim comedy amid the apocalypse and a celebration of the sheer indestructibility of the human spirit in a nation run riot: Michela Wrong's vision of Congo/Zaire during the Mobutu years is incisive, ironic and revelatory. Mr Kurtz, the colonial white master, brought evil to the remote upper reaches of the Congo River. A century after Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' was first published, Michela Wrong revisits the Congo during the turbulent era of Mobutu Sese Seko. From the heart of Africa comes grotesque confusion: pink-lipsticked rebel soldiers mingle with track-suited secret policemen in hotels where fin de siecle dinner parties are ploughing through vintage wines rather than leave them to the new regime. Congo, the African country richest in natural resources, has institutionalised kleptomania. Everyone is on the take. Someone has even swiped one of the uranium rods from the country's only nuclear reactor. Having presided over unprecedented looting of the country's wealth, Mobutu, like Kurtz, retreated deep within the jungle to his palace of marble floors and gold taps. A hundred years on and nothing has changed.

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