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A Training School for Elephants

A Training School for Elephants

by Sophy Roberts

Atlantic Monthly Press ·2025 ·400 pages
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About This Book

Out of a sidelined, colonial-era expedition in Africa comes a new history of cruelty, deception and adventure from the acclaimed author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia In 1879, King Leopold II of Belgium launched an ambitious plan to plunder Africa's resources. The key to cracking open the continent, or so he thought, was its elephants—if only he could train them. And so he commissioned the charismatic Irish adventurer Frederick Carter to ship four tamed Asian elephants from India to the East African coast, where they were marched inland towards Congo. The ultimate aim was to establish a training school for African elephants. Following in the footsteps of the four elephants, Roberts pieces together the story of this long-forgotten expedition, in travels that take her to Belgium, Iraq, India, Tanzania, and Congo. The storytelling brings to life a compelling cast of historic characters and modern voices, from ivory dealers to Catholic nuns, set against rich descriptions of the landscapes travelled. In an original weave of past and present, she digs deep into historic records revealing an extraordinary—and enduring—story of colonial greed, hypocrisy, and folly.


Reviews

"No doubt, but A Training School for Elephants works precisely because it is so evocative, and because many of the characters within are more complex—in all their greed and prejudice, but also courage and misguided idealism—than might be fashionable to admit in our censorious times."

Barnaby Phillips· Times Literary Supplement Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"This is a beautiful, intelligent and heartfelt book, a brilliantly researched account of an imperial fever dream alongside a no less feverish contemporary journey."

James McConnachie· The Times (UK) Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"And then, through research in archives as well as on the ground, for uncovering sparky details that bring the story to life ..."

Ruth Padel· The Guardian Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Any account of a journey in the footsteps of another is bound to be elegiac, but rarely has an elegy been so suffused with drama and pathos."

William Atkins· Financial Times Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Roberts errs by looking for the past in the present and failing to fully engage with that present on its own terms ..."

Carl Hoffman· The Washington Post Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"She never shows why the quartet of elephants might reveal how 'European imperialism had unfolded on the African continent' ..."

Dominic Green· The Wall Street Journal Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"In spite of Roberts' interrogation of colonialism, her thoughtful approach to geographic and ethnic group naming, and her critical account of Carter's journey and Leopold's motivation, there is something uncomfortable in centering so much of the book around her own experiences as a British woman traveling in Africa in search of answers."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"In Roberts's artful telling, the folly and brute madness of subjugating the African elephant serves as a searing symbol for the conquest of the continent itself."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

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