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5,644 words · no email, no account
No. 088 · Power & Politics · World Politics
Seventy-Two Days
a biography of Patrice Émery Lumumba (born Élias Okit'Asombo)
What the book is
On June 30, 1960, in the great hall of the Palais de la Nation in Léopoldville, a thirty-five-year-old former postal clerk rose to address a king. Patrice Lumumba had not been invited to speak. What he said in the next eleven minutes — about the lash, the forced labor, the looted rubber and severed hands — would help cost him his life within seven months.
Aubin Kalonji traces the seventy-two days of Lumumba's premiership and the long shadow they cast: the mutiny in the Force Publique, the secession of Katanga, the cables flying between Brussels, Washington and the United Nations, and the slow closing of every door. He returns again and again to the rooms where decisions were made — and to the man at the center of them, by turns visionary, exhausted, naive, and unyielding.
Drawing on Belgian state archives, declassified CIA files, and the testimony of those who drove the final convoy into the bush outside Élisabethville, Kalonji reconstructs not only a killing but a vanishing: of a country's first independent government, of a generation's faith in the postcolonial promise, of a body that was dissolved in acid so that no grave could be made.
What she offers, in the end, is a portrait of a man who understood, perhaps before anyone, what independence on someone else's terms would cost.
At a glance
- Subject
- Patrice Émery Lumumba (born Élias Okit'Asombo)
- Shelf
- Power & Politics · World Politics
- Written by
- Aubin Kalonji
- Chapters
- 19 across 215 pages
- Narrated by
- Camille Rhodes
- Editions
- Paperback · Hardcover · EPUB · Audiobook
- Authorisation
- Unauthorised — no subject, estate or label had approval over the text.
- Content notes
- state-sponsored murder · torture
Contents · 19 chapters
- 01Son of OnaluaRead free
- 02The Mission School4,916 words
- 03The Évolué4,789 words
- 04The Awakening3,334 words
- 05The Mouvement National Congolais3,356 words
- 06Accra3,009 words
- 07The Round Table3,072 words
- 08The Speech3,247 words
- 09Prime Minister3,768 words
- 10Katanga2,737 words
- 11The Cold War Comes to Congo3,116 words
- 12The Appeal2,772 words
- 13The Coup2,337 words
- 14The Escape2,533 words
- 15The Transfer2,133 words
- 16January 172,682 words
- 17The Aftermath4,035 words
- 18The Unfinished Promise3,840 words
- 19The Tooth3,532 words
The opening chapter is published in full — read it here.
Editions
- Paperback · $19.99
- 6 × 9 in · 215 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback
- Hardcover · $24.99
- 6 × 9 in · 215 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · case laminate on the same text block
- EPUB · $3.99
- EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books
ISBN 979-8-90470-044-7 - Audiobook · $5.99
- Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Camille Rhodes
ISBN 979-8-90623-025-6
The printed edition has no ISBN registered yet. It affects library and retail listing, not your order.
Questions
01Who is Seventy-Two Days about?
Patrice Émery Lumumba (born Élias Okit'Asombo). The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case Seventy-Two Days — and the name goes on the line underneath.
02Is this an authorised biography?
No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented.
03Can I read some of it before buying?
Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 5,644 words of the book.
04How long is it?
About 64,500 words, 19 chapters, 215 pages in the paperback.
05What is the printed book like?
6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf.
06Does this book carry content warnings?
Yes: state-sponsored murder; torture. They are listed before you buy rather than discovered afterwards. The material is handled as evidence, not as spectacle.
The writer
This book deals with
- state-sponsored murder
- torture
Listed before you buy, not after.
