Chasing the Devil Audiobook (Unabridged)

For many years Sierra Leone and Liberia have been too dangerous to travel through. With their wars officially over, Tim Butcher sets out on a journey across both countries, trekking for 350 miles through remote rainforest and malarial swamps, pursuing a trail blazed by Graham Greene in 1935. Weaving history and anthropology with personal narrative - as well as new discoveries about Greene - it is as exciting as it is enlightening.

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"This is an informative, well-researched book, packed with interesting snippets about the places he goes and the Greene's journey. There's a useful side to Tim's being a journalist - wherever he goes, he searches out the most interesting people and draws their stories into a wonderfully woven tale of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. This tale, almost a collection of other people's anecdotes tacked onto Tim's own journey, gives a much greater sense of context to the tragedies that have repeatedly swept across the region. While the title might seem at first glance a bit sensationalist, I think it makes sense. He talks repeatedly about the power of traditional magic and ritual, and how through fear and loyalty this preserves Liberian societies' egalitarian communalism in a way that seems to make extreme violence more usual. Certain things that stand out when you think of the Liberia and Sierra Leone civil wars - cannibalism, ritualised brutality, black magic - make more sense when coupled with Tim Butcher's explanation. There is a sense of parallel with the Greene's journey, but what makes this book really interesting is the way he uses the Greene's own story to draw European history together with the modern West Africa. Undoubtedly, the slave trade had a massive impact on this part of the world and any attempt to describe it without slavery as a point of reference would be inadequate. That said, the perspective is almost uniformly European, sometimes even neo-colonial; those who would expect something a bit deeper - what Liberia was like before Europeans turned up, for instance - will probably find themselves disappointed. Still, given the scope of the book, it's hugely illuminating and readable. He also describes with an unerring modesty the conditions of the places he stays in and the details of the trek, but never gets too bogged down in how difficult it was, which it must have been. Walking twenty miles a day is a challenge under the best of conditions, but when it's through sweltering jungle with only rice and chicken to sustain you, this must have been much tougher than he makes out. In all, a fantastic read, and an educational one at that."

— Jamie (5 out of 5 stars)