King Leopold's Ghost
King Leopold's Ghost is Adam Hochschild's history of how King Leopold II of Belgium took personal control of the Congo in the late nineteenth century and turned it into a vast forced-labor operation for rubber and ivory. Hochschild describes the killing, mutilation, and starvation that followed, in which millions of Congolese died, and he traces the early human rights campaign that exposed it, led by figures such as Edmund Dean Morel and Roger Casement. He brings the period to life through vivid portraits of villains, witnesses, and reformers. Published in 1998, the book recovered a history that had been largely forgotten in the West and became a bestseller. It remains a standard popular account of colonial atrocity and the activism that fought it.
What you might want to know about King Leopold's Ghost
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Adam Hochschild tells the story of the brutal exploitation of the Congo under Belgium's King Leopold II.
Yes. It is a work of narrative nonfiction drawn from historical records, first published in 1998, and it became a widely read account of Belgian colonial rule.
King Leopold's Ghost was written by Adam Hochschild, published in 1998 by Mariner Books.
King Leopold's Ghost is 384 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, King Leopold's Ghost takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
King Leopold's Ghost is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
