The epic story of the Congo-Oce´an railroad and the human costs and contradictions of modern empire.
The Congo-Océan railroad stretches across the Republic of Congo from Brazzaville to the Atlantic port of Pointe-Noir. It was completed in 1934, when Equatorial Africa was a French colony, and it stands as one of the deadliest construction projects in history. Colonial workers were subjects of an ostensibly dematic nation whose motto read "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," but liberal ideals were savaged by a cruelly indifferent administrative state. Native workers were forcibly conscripted and suffered under hellish conditions-hunger, disease, rampant physical abuse-that resulted in at least 20,000-25,000 deaths.
In the Forest of No Joy captures in vivid detail the experiences of the men, women, and children who toiled on the railroad, and forces a reassessment of the moral relationship between modern industrialized...