King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild

Winner of the 1999 Duff Cooper Prize, this acclaimed history uncovers a humanitarian catastrophe that once shook the world — and has since been almost entirely forgotten.

At the turn of the twentieth century, reports of mass violence in the Congo provoked outrage across Britain, Europe and the United States. Politicians, church leaders and writers publicly condemned the atrocities. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a bestselling pamphlet. The issue dominated newspapers and public debate. And yet, within a century, it all but vanished from popular memory.

This book reconstructs that moment with clarity and force, showing how millions died, why the world briefly paid attention, and how such an event could be so thoroughly erased. Urgent, vivid and deeply researched, it is widely regarded as a landmark work of historical writing — one that rewards rereading and still feels unsettlingly relevant today.

Praised as “brilliant and gripping” and “an exemplary piece of history writing”, this is essential reading for anyone interested in empire, memory, and the politics of forgetting.

• European History
• Colonial History

ENG- English

• Paperback