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Books

In the heart of darkness, the atom bomb

The connections that Patrick Marnham makes in Snake Dance - from the Congo to Fukushima, from Conrad to the Bomb - are sometimes tenuous but always compelling

23 November 2013

9:00 AM

23 November 2013

9:00 AM

Snake Dance Patrick Marnham

Hutchinson, pp.316, £18.99, ISBN: 9780701184728

At the dark heart of this dark book is a startling fact: Joseph Conrad was employed to steam up the Congo river by the same company, Union Minière du Haut Katanga, that later shipped uranium from the Congo to the US, where it was used to make the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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