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River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice MillardRiver of the Gods recounts one of the great quests of nineteenth-century exploration: the search for the source of the Nile. For millennia, the river’s headwaters had eluded Egyptian, Roman, and later European expeditions, blocked by vast swamps and unforgiving terrain. Amid the surge of imperial ambition and scientific curiosity that followed the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone, the Royal Geographical Society sent two very different Englishmen—Richard Burton, a brilliant, controversial polymath, and John Hanning Speke, a driven young officer eager for distinction—into the African interior to solve the mystery once and for all.
What followed was not only a grueling physical journey marked by illness, deprivation, and near-constant danger, but a psychological and moral unraveling. Burton and Speke’s partnership collapsed into rivalry when Speke pressed on alone and claimed to have found the source at Lake Victoria, igniting a bitter public feud that ended in tragedy on the eve of a decisive debate. Millard deepens the story by restoring a crucial, long-overlooked figure to the narrative: Sidi Mubarak Bombay, an enslaved African who became the expeditions’ indispensable guide and whose courage, linguistic skill, and local knowledge made their survival—and success—possible. The result is a gripping account of ambition and obsession, as well as a clear-eyed examination of exploration’s human cost and its entanglement with the colonial project.
Goodreads Rating: 3.8/5
Publication date: 2022
Length: 283
Continent: Africa
Meeting Leader: Jordan
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