Every book can be summarized in 6 paragraphs….
- Editorial Peninsula. First edition
- Author: Xavier Aldekoa
- Book for interested in: Travel, Africa, Adventures, Great routes, The Congo, rivers.
- What will? The journalist Xavier Aldekoa navigates the Congo river from its sources to the mouth. The journey becomes a succession of events, voices and characters from which the complicated social reality and the history of the country is explained.
Paragraph 1
The river will catch you. Do not make the mistake of believing that it is only moving water. It's like people: sometimes, good; other, wicked.
That phrase is a advice that gives the author before starting to navigate the flow. And, somehow, put the reader in the context of what will come after. One of the great virtues of the work is to make the river a character in the text.
Paragraph 2
A shake toured the spine. I didn't like having to give money to advance, But it was the only way out. The Mai-Mai were the authority in those roads reorted through the jungle. At the same time, That agreement left a thousand doubts in the air. Could I trust that those murderers and thieves respect their word?
The text tells how complicated it is to advance through a land without law. Having white skin aggravates the situation. The protagonist is recognizable and makes him a target of corrupt police officers, paramilitar or thugs who understand that it is someone with more money than the rest of their victims (All are victims of those abuses in that context, But the target outside his atmosphere is presupposed a well -being that has allowed him to get there). Perhaps the only problem with the book, that in any case it is insurmountable since it is a linear narrative in time, is that the beginning is more thrill than the end. Aldekoa's first steps for Congo are full of difficulties and dangers that love something when it manages to get on the mampeza barge with which he travels most of the flow.
Paragraph 3
The King of Kongo took advantage of the European interest in the slave trade to submit to the Discolo villages, and changed prisoners of rival kingdoms for seeds, exotic fabrics or products. The relationship was strengthened. One of Alfonso I's children was sent to Europe at eleven years to study in the seminar and learned Portuguese and Latin.
"Quijote in the Congo" is very well documented. It is narrated, Through places and people that the author finds in his path, The history of today's country and for centuries heart of an unknown continent. The lands of El Congo were an enigma for the rest of the world, And the book disassembles that image that they were land without kingdoms or cities in which some barbarians lived without any social structure.
Paragraph 4
Most of the Congolese do not live: We survive daily. It is an infinite struggle. Every day you get up and face a day as if it were a fight. Can you live like this? While we chatted, Japhet approached and lengthened a piece of bread.
Aldekoa especially converts Barcaza Mampeza into a vaodevil of characters with which the river crosses. And there are friendship scenes, rabia, fear, Love ... among a series of characters that are portraying with skill and becomes adventure partners. It is with the daily scenes of the ship with which the environment explains.
Paragraph 5
The method was ruthless: They assaulted a village, They took women and girls as hostages - and often raped them later - and forced men to enter the jungle to collect a certain rubber quota. If they did not get the required amount, They amputated their hands or some of their children.
The human atrocities that the country has lived in Belgian colonial times, When that land was owned by King Leopold II, And that continued after their independence, With sinister characters like the mythical Mobutu, They are a wound without healing in the population. The book travels every period and gives it a current context.
Paragraph 6
The Congo pounces on the ocean, Without forming a delta. It is not an end in peace. The Congo River does not die in the ocean: I ram him
The Epilogue of the Book is a summary of this magnificent work.
| Style | 9,10/10 |
| Content | 9,40/10 |
| Valoración | 9,25/10 |
