The Democratic Republic of Congo, by all accounts, is an amazingly beautiful country. At the same time, it is the scene of some of the most horrific and ugly human interaction ever. How did this happen? In many ways, its gifts became the seeds of its horror from the very beginning (story, slideshow, videos): http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/dr-congo-understanding-conflict
In 1899, Joseph Conrad (né Józef Teodor Konrad Nałęcz Korzeniowski) published a novella as a three-part series in a magazine. Heart of Darkness is about Congo, a place Conrad knew from his own time there eight years before. It is, IMHO, one of the finest,
most meaningful, most memorable works in any language, of any time, and I recommend it highly. The Congo he describes seems not to have changed much. Witness the following passage:
"In and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were
rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened with slime, invaded the
contorted mangroves that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an
impotent despair. Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a
particularised impression, but the general sense of vague and
oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst
hints for nightmares."
You can download the book for free here: http://www.online-literature.com/conrad/heart_of_darkness/ And after you read it (but only after you read it), watch Apocalypse Now.
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