Another masterpiece from a writer of enviable skill.’’ “My favourite sort of travel book – a real self-propelled journey plus engaging personal reflections and vivid historical vignettes linked to the grimness of contemporary events. It is an inspirational account of humanity’s wonderful spirit to survive and proof that, in Tim Butcher, Africa has a worthy chronicler.’’ Where once there was cruelty and conflict in Sierra Leone and Liberia, Tim Butcher finds grounds for hope, giving a voice to the silent majority who retained their dignity in the face of terrible suffering. “Chasing the Devil shows the power of good to prevail over evil. a fascinating, harrowing and eventful book.’’ “Butcher’s book is packed with incident …. Weaving history and anthropology with personal narrative – as well as new discoveries about Greene – it is as exciting as it is enlightening. Tim encounters these devils, both good and bad, on an epic journey demanding courage, doggedness and good fortune.Ĭhasing the Devil is a dramatic travel book touching on one of the most fraught parts of the globe at a unique moment in its history.

Some are no more threatening than schoolmasters but others are much more sinister, relying on ritual cannibalism as a source of magical power.

And he encounters other ‘devils’, masked figures guarding the spiritual secrets of jungle communities. This is where he now heads, facing down demons from his time as a reporter, exploring how rebel groups thrived there for so long and seeing whether the devil of war has truly been chased away. Tim walks every blistering inch to gain an extraordinary ground-level view of a troubled and overlooked region.Īs a journalist in Africa, Tim came to know both countries well although warfare made trips to the jungle hinterland far too risky.

Greene took 26 bearers, a case of scotch, and hammocks in which he and his travelling companion, his cousin Barbara, could be carried. Just as he followed H M Stanley through the Congo – a journey described in his bestseller Blood River – this time he pursues a trail blazed in 1935 by Graham Greene and immortalised in the travel classic Journey Without Maps. With their wars over, Tim Butcher set out in 2009 on a journey across both countries, trekking for 350 miles through remote rainforest and malarial swamps. For many years Sierra Leone and Liberia were too dangerous for outsiders to travel through, bedevilled by a uniquely brutal form of violence from which sprang many of Africa’s cruellest contemporary icons – child soldiers, prisoner mutilation, blood diamonds.

Chasing the devil by tim butcher