Chasing the Devil

Butcher's book is packed with incident... fascinating, harrowing and eventful

Joan Smith, Independent

Butcher is really a Victorian explorer and writer endowed with the sterling grit of that age... He is tough and he's honest

Evening Standard

A brave book by a writer of skill and principle... He exposes the toxic cocktail of colonial exploitation, tribal conflict, ritual violence and blood diamonds that spits out regional monsrosities such as Charles Taylor... an admirable book

Brian Schofield, Sunday Times

Engaging...descriptions of walking through the bush, of sweltering heat, sweat and swelling blisters are juxtaposed against moments of beauty...a test of endurance

Aminatta Forna, Sunday Telegraph

An inspirational account of humanity's wonderful spirit to survive

Archbiship Desmond Tutu

This is a very fine, very depressing, travel book

John Sutherland, Financial Times

This an engaging, well-written book. Anyone who enjoyed Blood River will enjoy this. The narrative skilfully interweaves Greene's experiences with that of the author and the history and the anthropology of the territory through which he is passing

Chris Mullin, Daily Telegraph

Tim Butcher has a respect and affection for West Africa that is genuine and touching, writing in a way that brings out the exuberance and wit of its people. This book is required reading for anyone even vaguely interested in this remote and enigmatic region

Daily Mail

The unflinching descriptions of the horrors of the recent wars in both countries are hard to shake from the mind.

Financial Times, Christmas round up

A clear-sighted view of the recent atrocities in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Hugh Thomson, Independent, Christmas round up

Butcher's research, combined with the inescapable fact that not a lot is widely known in the west about the place, makes for a fairly entertaining read as the author, his companion and two guides stay faithful to Greene's trek, hacking and plodding along this 350-mile path. This is a well-written account of an unusual adventure, even if the "killing fields" seem a long way away

Julian Fleming, Sunday Business Post

Butcher's travelogue is a mix of nervous adventuring through a landscape littered with shell casings, and historical assessment peppered with Greeniana. Sobering and illuminating

James Urquhart, Financial Times

A multi-layered and thought-provoking account of the attractions of danger and his encounters with the devastation of ritual violence, child soldiers, blood diamonds and the "devil" guarding remote jungle communities

Aimee Shalan, Guardian

A brave and wholly engaging narrative.

National Geographic Traveller

'Chasing the Devil is an adventure story, complete with swinging rope bridges, murderous chimpanzees, deathly diseases, heart-eating cannibals and the shadowy omnipotence of the "village devil" '

Times Literary Supplement