IT IS NEARLY a decade since this book was first published. When I began working on it, it was surprisingly hard to get anyone interested. Of the ten New York publishers who saw a detailed outline of the book, nine turned it down. One suggested the story might work better as a magazine article. The others said there was no market for books on African history or simply felt Americans would not care about these events so long ago, in a place few could find on a map. Happily, the tenth publisher, Houghton Mifflin, had more faith in readers' ability to see connections between Leopold's Congo and today. Macmillan, in Britain, felt the same way. In English and eleven other languages, more than 350,000 copies are now in print. The book has given rise to several films (most notably Pippa Scott's documentary King Leopold's Ghost), Web sites on Congolese history in English and French, a rap song, an avant-garde off-Broadway play, and a remarkable sculpture by the California artist Ron......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 4103
Approximate Pages: 16 (260 words per double-spaced page) |