First Choose Your Congo 

‘The Congo’ is something of an enigma, not least because there are actually two Congos: the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo. So, if one is planning to visit ‘the Congo’, it is only sensible that one adopts the essential advice to ‘first choose your Congo’.

This is what Brian and his wife did, choosing to travel to the Republic of Congo – the safer of the two. He secured a place on an expedition into the heart of the Congo rainforest, where marauding rebels and gun-toting thugs were nowhere to be found; only a pristine environment, extremely well-stocked with an extravagance of natural wonders.

First Choose Your Congo is a work that shines an illuminating light into the rarely-visited dark heart of Africa, but it is also a work that is intended to be provocative, irreverent – and amusing. It is not a work dedicated entirely to the process of tracking Western lowland gorillas and the discovery of an Ayatollah monkey, but a somewhat ‘generous’ interpretation of the travel genre.

It is inexplicably the ninth book in David’s seven-part travel series and, intriguingly, the first to reveal the connection between the Congo’s forest elephants and Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. Previous books in David’s ‘Brian’s World’ series have been featured in Backpacker Trade News and the Sunday Post. This hilarious take on traditional travel writing will appeal to those with an interest in different cultures.

David Fletcher was born in Rugby and graduated from the University of Birmingham with a degree in Chemistry. He then trained as a Chartered Accountant with what is now Deloitte, later becoming partner. He has published thirteen other books with Matador, the most recent of these being Crystal Balls and Moroccan Walls (2014), Marmite, Bites and Noisy Nights (in Zambia) (2014) and The Country-cides of Namibia and Botswana (2015).