Another Day of Life

Ryszard Kapuściński on Another Day of Life.

ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE — official Polish trailer

Another Day of Life is one of the most personal and moving reportages in Ryszard Kapuściński’s body of work, published in 1976. In it the author recounts events in Angola in 1975 — the dramatic months when, after the withdrawal of the Portuguese coloniser, the country plunged into civil war and Kapuściński was one of the very few foreign correspondents to remain in chaos-stricken Luanda.

The book conveys the atmosphere of a disintegrating city: emptying streets, residents fleeing before the advancing front, crates of belongings piled up on the quay, an all-pervading sense of danger. Kapuściński sets off into the interior, to the front line, where the MPLA units — supported by Cuban soldiers — clash with rival factions and the intervening South African army. Every journey across the “empty,” no-man’s space between checkpoints is a gamble with death.

It is at once a masterful war reportage and a profoundly human story about fear, loneliness and the responsibility of the witness. Kapuściński does not hide his own emotions or doubts — he writes about the limits of the reporter’s craft, the burden of looking at suffering, and the fragility of human life in the face of war. The book was adapted into an award-winning animated film in 2018.

Themes

• The final days of colonialism
• The chaos of independence
• The value of bearing witness
• War and human dignity

Significance

A testament of reportage from one of the 20th century’s greatest witnesses to history.