The Book Prize Index

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism In Colonial Africa

Adam Hochschild

"In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River." "King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust."--BOOK JACKET.

HistoryWorld History · medium confidenceWorld History81 signalsLlm Classifier: World History -> World HistoryAward Category: Duff Cooper Prize: History, Biography & Political Science -> BiographyAward Category: Biography -> BiographyAfrica & the African DiasporaBlack History & Culture

Award History

3 wins · 4 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Lionel Gelber Prize: International AffairsMajor1999WinnerSecondary source
Duff Cooper Prize: History, Biography & Political Science1999WinnerSecondary source
Mark Lynton History Prize1999WinnerSecondary source
National Book Critics Circle Award for NonfictionMajor1998FinalistSecondary source
View all award history (4)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    • King Leopold II of Belgium78%

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • the Congo River55%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    35 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 72%.