Lapidarium IV

About the Book

Lapidarium IV is the fourth volume of the cycle — a collection of Ryszard Kapuściński’s aphorisms, notes and reflections, largely centred on the turn of the 1980s and 1990s and its aftermath. It is a record of a world in which the old order is collapsing while a new one is born only with difficulty on its ruins.

The author ponders the experience of the fall of empires and ideologies, the tension between hope and doubt, the meaning of human solidarity in times of upheaval. Questions about the word and about the ethics of the reporter also return — about the responsibility of the one who describes the world in an age of information overload and the growing power of the media.

As in the other volumes, Lapidarium IV is a book meant to be read in fragments, in any order. Each aphorism opens onto new senses with every fresh reading, and the whole forms the intellectual diary of one of the most perceptive observers of the 20th century — someone who could read great historical processes through the fate of a single human being.

Themes

• The collapse of the old order
• Hope and doubt
• The reporter’s word
• Human solidarity

Format

Aphorisms that open new meanings with each reading.

See Also

• Lapidarium IV — Polish editions and ISBN numbers.