Ryszard Kapuściński (March 4, 1932 - January 23, 2007)

When I was younger I bought a book by this author than ensured that I hardly ever read fiction again. It really left a mark, along side Hunter S Thompson which I also read around the same time. Ryszard Kapuściński died last month and I would recommend anyone to read one of his books.Unfortunately not all have been translated to English but hopefully they will be in time.


(Following text is not my own)
Ryszard Kapuściński (March 4, 1932 - January 23, 2007) was a popular Polish journalist, author, publicist and poet both at home and abroad.Born in Pińsk, a city that was formerly located in the Kresy Wschodnie (Eastern Borderlands) of the Second Polish Republic and now belongs to Belarus, Kapuściński is generally thought of as Poland's leading journalist. In the years 1954-1981 he was a member of Polish United Workers' Party. In 1964, after honing his skills on domestic stories, he "was appointed by the Polish Press Agency (PAP) as its only foreign correspondent, and for the next ten years he was 'responsible' for fifty countries." Throughout this period, Kapuściński traveled around the developing world and reported on wars, coups and revolutions in Asia, Europe and the Americas; including the Soccer War a "bloody, scarcely believable conflict that Honduras and El Salvador waged in 1969 over a pair of soccer games." When he finally returned to Poland, he had lived through twenty-seven revolutions and coups. In the English speaking world, Kapuściński is best known for his reporting from Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, when he witnessed first-hand the end of the European colonial empires on that continent.

Starting in the early 1960s, Kapuściński has published books of increasing literary craftsmanship characterized by sophisticated narrative technique, psychological portraits of characters, a wealth of stylization and metaphor and unusual imagery that serves as means of interpreting the perceived world. Kapuściński's best-known book, The Emperor, concerns itself with the decline of Haile Selassie's anachronistic regime in Ethiopia. Shah of Shahs, on the fall of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, and Imperium, about the last days of the Soviet Union, have enjoyed similar success.

Kapuściński was fascinated not only by exotic worlds and people, but also by books: he approached foreign countries first through literature, spending months reading before each trip. He knew how to listen to the people he met, but he was also capable of "reading" the hidden sense of the scenes he encountered: the way the Europeans moved out of Angola, a discussion regarding alimony in the Tanganyikan parliament, the reconstruction of frescoes in the new Russia—he turned each of these vignettes into a metaphor of historical transformation. This tendency to process private adventures into a greater social synthesis has made Kapuściński an eminent thinker, and the volumes of his ongoing Lapidarium series are a fascinating record of the shaping of a reporter's observations into philosophical reflections on the world and people.

Salman Rushdie wrote about him: "One Kapuściński is worth more than a thousand whimpering and fantasizing scribblers. His exceptional combination of journalism and art allows us to feel so close to what Kapuściński calls the inexpressible true image of war".

Although he was frequently mentioned as a favorite to win the Nobel Prize in literature, it was never awarded to him. In a 2006 interview with Reuters, Kapuściński said that he wrote for "people everywhere still young enough to be curious about the world." This quote from Kapuściński maybe the most important. Introducing him into college level courses provides another view to those students about the world of the Cold War and the role of dictators, "revoltuions" and the US and Soviet's attempts to influence the world. He died on January 23, 2007, following a grave illness.Since his death he has been offered many epitaphs in the press, such as, "The master of modern journalism", "Translator of the World" and "The Greatest Reporter in the World", "Herodotus of our times", "Third World chronicler".

R.I.P

nb.New book arriving early 2007 in English.