2018-09-13

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO - In My Congo Bart Demyttenaere goes in search of the traces of three generations of Demyttenaere in his native country. 

Michael, Jos and Bart: three generations of Demyttenaere with a link to Congo. The first was a sea captain. Between 1879 and 1882 he supplied Stanley on behalf of King Leopold II. The second worked from 1959 to 1964 as an agent for a cotton company in the north of Katanga. He experienced the last months of Belgian Congo, the secession of Katanga and the fall of Tshombe. And Bart, the third and youngest? He was born in 1963 in Albertstad, was a teacher in the Zaire of Mobutu from 1986 to 1990 and later became a writer. In My Congo he goes in search of the traces of three generations of Demyttenaere in his native country.

It is a story about an immeasurable country, its inhabitants, its rain as falling rivers, its locust plagues... But it is just as much a story about the confrontation between a father and a son. Because Jos and Bart Demyttenaere are completely different and have never had a close relationship with each other. But they do share memories of their Congo. Each in their own way. Top-notch narrative non-fiction.

Team members

Bart Demyttenaere

Bart Demyttenaere is a writer of children's and youth books and non-fiction.

Supported
€ 9.739, allocated on 04/07/2017.
ID
FPD/2017/1353

BOOK (in Dutch)

  • Title: Mijn Congo
  • Subtitle: Een familiegeschiedenis
  • Author: Bart De Myttenaere
  • Publisher: Uitgeverij Epo
  • Date: 2018
  • Number of pg.: 420 p.
  • ISBN: 9789462671416

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