Rivers, like mountains, are places of the imagination as much as they are facts of geography and political history. In the introduction to his 2014 book Congo: The Epic History of a People, Belgian historian David van Reybrouck acknowledges this duality — let’s call it the magical actuality of rivers — in... read full story
"That is how a country begins: far before the coastline, thinned down with lots and lots of seawater."