The best known books set in each country: Democratic Republic of Congo

See here for methodology, though now I am restricting the table to books actually set in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

TitleAuthorGoodreads
raters
LibraryThing
owners
The Poisonwood BibleBarbara Kingsolver752,10926,582
Heart of DarknessJoseph Conrad519,31623,867
CongoMichael Crichton172,4488,107
King Leopold’s GhostAdam Hochschild60,8584841
A Bend in the RiverV.S. Naipaul17,8453218
Tintin in the Congo Hergé10,9641333
Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken HeartTim Butcher 11,489952
A Burnt-Out CaseGraham Greene5,0491,904

I was surprised by the fact that I had read half of these, though much less surprised that six of the top eight are by white men. Disqualified due to not being sufficiently set in the DR Congo are The Leopard, by Jo Nesbo; The Mission Song, by John le Carré; and The Dream of the Celt, by Mario Vargas Llosa. I was interested that books by two former colleagues, Gerard Prunier and Jason Stearns, were both bubbling under. The top book by an author who is actually from Congo is How Dare the Sun Rise: Memoirs of a War Child, by Sandra Uwiringiyimana.

Next up: Vietnam.

India | China | USA | Indonesia | Pakistan | Nigeria | Brazil (revisited) | Bangladesh (revisited) | Russia | Mexico | Japan | Philippines (revisited) | Ethiopia (revisited) | Egypt | DR Congo | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Germany | France | Thailand | UK | Tanzania | South Africa | Italy | Myanmar | Kenya | Colombia | South Korea | Sudan | Uganda | Spain | Algeria | Iraq | Argentina | Afghanistan