As the author of `Blood River - A Journey To Africa's Broken Heart' I was delighted to read that the book hit home with Roman. The Congo is the most harrowing, haunting place and it gives me great pride to think that I was able to convey some of that in the book.
As for Tintin and his adventures in the Congo, please visit my blog for an account of how the Congolese today regard the cartoon reporter. You might be surprised.
Please visit http://www.rhgdigital.co.uk/blog...gs/bloodriver//
Many thanks, Tim. It's a privilege to have you on MAtK.
By the way, I just realised I didn't follow the first principle of journalism (get your facts straight) - it seems I mixed up the date when the book came out in June. Thursday the 7th it was, not the 5th.
Tsk tsk Roman. Heh. Apparently Waterstone's got a lot of flak for refusing to take Tintin off the shelves. They just moved it to the adult section. I dunno why people kick up a fuss about supposed racism, it's like saying, rewrite Tom Sawyer or Heart of Darkness because it's racist. There is even a band around the book with a disclaimer saying that it represents the view of the 1930s. Bloody Nanny State, typical.
But to give you an amusing and be-smugging fact, ever since the Tintin scandal, sales for the book have gone up 4000%. How's that for irony?
ah! "there's only good publicity..."
still, I think it's typical of the quality of our debate - instead of trying to tackle social problems "out there" (including racism), we focus on Herge and Tintin!!
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