In 1879, King Leopold II aimed to exploit Africa by training elephants, commissioning Frederick Carter to transport Asian elephants to Congo. In A Training School for Elephants, Sophy Roberts retraces this expedition, exploring colonial greed and human-animal relationships through historic and modern narratives, revealing a tale of exploitation and folly across diverse landscapes.
Sophy Roberts is an award-winning British journalist, and a regular contributor to FT Weekend. Her critically acclaimed first book, The Lost Pianos of Siberia, was a Sunday Times Book of the Year in 2020, and went on to be published in eight more languages. Her second book, A Training School for Elephants, is another unusual quest, threading lost history with modern reportage in India, Iraq, DRC, Tanzania, and Belgium. Following an 1879 journey that four elephants from Pune made to Africa’s Great Lakes, it is a reckoning with colonial ambitions gone berserk.