A Training School for Elephants

In 1879, King Leopold began his quest to plunder Africa''s resources. His secret weapon would be the elephants. And so he commissioned the charismatic Irish adventurer Frederick Carter to ship four Asian elephants from India to the East African coast, where they were marched inland. The ultimate aim was to establish a training school for African elephants. Following in the footsteps of this colonial caravan, Roberts pieces together Carter''s biography, digging deep into his expedition records to reveal his insane, ill-fated, extraordinary journey into the heart of the tormented, exploited and beautiful Congo. With a rich cast of characters including ivory dealers, busybody missionaries, tribal chiefs and of course, four majestic elephants, Roberts brings the Congo and Carter''s story to life and, through it, dares to confront our difficult imperial history.

Auteur

Sophy Roberts is an award-winning British journalist, and a regular contributor to FT Weekend. Her critically acclaimed first book, The Lost Pianos of Siberia, was a Sunday Times Book of the Year in 2020, and went on to be published in eight more languages. Her second book, A Training School for Elephants, is another unusual quest, threading lost history with modern reportage in India, Iraq, DRC, Tanzania and Belgium. Following an 1879 journey that four elephants from Pune made to Africa's Great Lakes, it is a reckoning with colonial ambitions gone berserk.

Texte du rabat

'A modern-day Freya Stark' - Tatler
'Roberts' writing is beguiling' - The i
'Roberts is a wonderfully lyrical writer' *- Observer
'*An author of courage, patience, erudition, and a sympathetic imagination. - Dervla Murphy

From the acclaimed author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia, comes a new journey tracing a colonial-era African expedition.

In 1879, King Leopold II of Belgium launched an ambitious plan to plunder Africa's resources. The key to cracking open the continent, or so he thought, was its elephants - if only he could train them. And so he commissioned the charismatic Irish adventurer Frederick Carter to ship four tamed Asian elephants from India to the East African coast, where they were marched inland towards Congo. The ultimate aim was to establish a training school for African elephants.
Following in the footsteps of the four elephants, Roberts pieces together the story of this long-forgotten expedition, in travels that take her to Belgium, Iraq, India, Tanzania and Congo. The storytelling brings to life a compelling cast of historic characters and modern voices, from ivory dealers to Catholic nuns, set against rich descriptions of the landscapes travelled. She digs deep into historic records to reckon with our broken relationship with animals, revealing an extraordinary - and enduring - story of colonial greed, ineptitude, hypocrisy and folly.
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*Praise for *The Lost Pianos of Siberia

• An extraordinary encounter with a wildly fascinating and astonishingly ill-known region... This is a wonderful book. - Sunday Times

• The ultimate quest for the oddest objects - pianos - in the most unlikely place - Siberia. But Roberts makes it much more than that, an elegant and nuanced journey through literature, through history, through music, murder and incarceration and revolution, through snow and ice and remoteness, to discover the human face of Siberia. I loved this book. - Paul Theroux

• An impressive exploration of Siberia's terrifying past. - Guardian

• An exuberant, eccentric journey through Russian vastness, European history and Russian culture, The Lost Pianos of Siberia is a quixotic quest, a picaresque travel adventure and a strange forgotten story, all wrapped into one fascinating book. - Simon Sebag-Montefiore

• What shines through in this book is Roberts' genuine, humane affection for and fascination with the people she meets in Siberia. - Literary Review

Résumé

In 1879, King Leopold II of Belgium launched an ambitious plan to plunder Africa's resources. The key to cracking open the continent, or so he thought, was its elephants if only he could train them. And so he commissioned the charismatic Irish adventurer Frederick Carter to ship four tamed Asian elephants from India to the East African coast, where they were marched inland towards Congo. The ultimate aim was to establish a training school for African elephants.

Following in the footsteps of the four elephants, Roberts pieces together the story of this long-forgotten expedition, in travels that take her to Belgium, Iraq, India, Tanzania and Congo. The storytelling brings to life a compelling cast of historic characters and modern voices, from ivory dealers to Catholic nuns, set against rich descriptions of the landscapes travelled. She digs deep into historic records to reckon with our broken relationship with animals, revealing an extraordinary and enduring story of colonial greed, ineptitude, hypocrisy and folly.