Abstract
THIS volume, which is a translation of “Voyage au Congo” and “Le Retour du Tchad”, published in 1927 and 1928, is the embodiment of an ambition realised after thirty-six years. It is appropriately dedicated to Joseph Conrad. Andre Gide, the distinguished French man of letters, has here recorded the day-to-day events and the impressions stored up in a journey by road and river, in boat and car, but mostly on foot, through the Belgian and French Congo to Lake Chad. The reader should feel no disappointment at finding this no scientific record: beyond an amateur interest in the more remarkable fauna of the tropics, and to some greater extent in the lepidoptera and flora, the author had not the equipment for systematic observation. But nevertheless, as a vivid impressionistic picture of life and travel in tropical Africa, it has a value. Native life and character stand out in the round against a background of the forest. Though the author started, as he himself confesses, with little interest in the native and his relations with the white inhabitants and the administration, this soon became the main interest of the journey. It is beyond question that his intervention brought to the notice of the administration many abuses in treatment of the natives by the commercial companies to whom concessions had been granted.
Travels in the Congo.
André
Gide
By. Translated from the French by Dorothy Bussy. Pp. ix + 375 + 16 plates. (New York and London: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930.) 15s. net.
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Travels in the Congo . Nature 125, 596 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/125596c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/125596c0