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CHASING THE DEVIL

Name: CHASING THE DEVIL
Author: Tim Butcher
ISBN: 978-1-935633-29-7

A JOURNEY THROUGH SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF GRAHAM GREENE

by Tim Butcher ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 13, 2011

This engaging tale will leave many reaching for their Graham Greene.

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An award-winning British journalist retraces the young novelist Graham Greene’s 1935 walk through Sierra Leone and Liberia.

At 30, Greene was looking for “a smash-and-grab raid into the primitive” when he set out on the jungle trek recounted in his travel book Journeys Without Maps. His entourage included his cousin Barbara and 26 porters, three servants and one chef. More than 70 years later, Butcher (Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart, 2008) made his way through the same remote backcountry in the wake of civil warfare that he had covered recently as African correspondent for the London Telegraph. Like Greene, he is attracted by the thrill of danger, but he also sought to understand the modern evil that has fostered child soldiering and violence over “blood diamonds” in the region. Accompanied by a friend’s son, Butcher found many villages unchanged since Greene’s visit, which is occasionally recalled by village elders. In Sierra Leone, he visited Freetown, once the “Athens of Africa,” now poor and corrupt, and a transit point for Colombian cocaine barons moving drugs into Europe. Greene based his novel The Heart of the Matter on his own stay in Freetown, whose seediness informs much of his fiction. In Liberia, Butcher met war victims, rice farmers and others, and discovered communities where secret societies worship the devil. While vividly describing the beauty of landscapes and the ugliness of derelict shantytowns, the author weaves in stories of freed slaves who settled both Sierra Leone and Liberia, and the tensions between settlers and indigenous people that have shaped the histories of both places. At journey’s end, Butcher has a new understanding of Greene the adventurer, whose own trek sparked the novelist’s lifelong love of Africa.

This engaging tale will leave many reaching for their Graham Greene.

Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011

ISBN: 978-1-935633-29-7

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Atlas & Co.

Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE TRIGGER
by Tim Butcher

- BOOK REVIEW
BLOOD RIVER
by Tim Butcher

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.