The Emperor on kapuscinski.info

The Emperor. Polish Editions and ISBN.

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Below is a working list of Polish editions of “The Emperor” by Ryszard Kapuściński. In older editions the ISBN was not always given, or does not appear in the available library catalogues.

Polish Editions

Edition I Year of publication: 1978 Publisher: Czytelnik Print run: 35,000 copies ISBN: no confirmed number

Edition II Year of publication: 1980 Publisher: Czytelnik Print run: 40,000 copies ISBN: 83-07-00156-0

Edition III Year of publication: 1982 Publisher: Czytelnik Print run: 35,000 copies ISBN: no confirmed number

"The Emperor" at Teatr Zagłębie — Upcoming Performances

Tue, 25 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Details:

Premiere: 5 November 2016
Running time: 75 min, no interval

Upcoming Performances:

27/04/2017 19:00 Buy ticket
19/05/2017 19:00

Ryszard Kapuściński — “The Emperor” Aneta Głuch-Klucznik — direction Tomasz Man — adaptation Marianna Lisiecka — set design and costumes Marek Otwinowski — music Maćko Prusak — choreography Robert Baliński — lighting design * * * - Everyone surrounding the emperor is precisely like this: on their knees and with a knife — says Y.M., one of the subjects of the Ethiopian ruler Haile Selassie in a conversation with Ryszard Kapuściński. Others also speak: his officials, servants, palace people. Of servility, fear, competing for favour, submissiveness, and toadying, which for years built the emperor’s absolute power. Of climbing the rungs of power, ever higher and higher. - At the summits it is never warm. Icy winds blow; everyone stands hunched and must watch that a neighbour does not topple him into the abyss. — Y.M. concludes. “The Emperor” is one of the most famous books by Ryszard Kapuściński — the outstanding reporter, also called the emperor of reportage. A universal story about power, book of the year according to “The Sunday Times”, a world bestseller, staged many times in theatres; at Teatr Zagłębie after 15 years since the last production. Director Aneta Głuch-Klucznik on Kapuściński’s “The Emperor”: “The Emperor” is in my opinion far more a form of reflection on the nature of power than a description of a specific situation in Ethiopia. The events described are in essence no different from what can be observed in other states. For me it is a book not about the Emperor, but about the people of the Court — more precisely: about what it looks like, what characterises it, and what it does to people, the fact of reaching for power. The strength of Kapuściński’s book lies precisely in his ability to show the mechanisms and dependencies between “those above” and “those below” in the hierarchy. (…) For me this story is a sad fairy tale (?) about ourselves. Cast: Agnieszka Bałaga-Okońska Agnieszka Bieńkowska Maria Bieńkowska Ryszarda Celińska Beata Deutschman Michał Bałaga Przemysław Kania Krzysztof Korzeniowski Tomasz Muszyński Sebastian Węgrzyn Urszula Czyż: prompter’s assistant Agnieszka Dzwonek: prompter LIST OF REVIEWS OF THE PRODUCTION: The Spell of Absolute Power, Tomasz Kostro, sosnowiec.info.pl The Emperor — a review, Tomasz Sknadaj, Teraz Teatr Humanity — absent, or “The Emperor” at Teatr Zagłębia, Szymon Michlewicz-Sowa, Reflektor The Emperor, Agnieszka Kobroń, Afisz Teatralny A (Non-)Repeating Pattern, Robert Przeliorz, Blog Irracjonalnie Nieracjonalny The Need for a Strong Voice, Daria Sobik, Portal Katowicki A Very Political Production, Marta Fox, marta-fox.blog.onet.pl Entangled in the System, Magdalena Czerny-Kehl, Teatralia

Review of the Production of "The Emperor" directed by Aneta Głuch-Klucznik at Teatr Zagłębia in Sosnowiec

Tue, 15 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

“The Emperor” is one of the best-known books by Ryszard Kapuściński, one that surely needs no special introduction. This work has been brought to the stage on many occasions, always to great success. Today, fifteen years after the last theatrical production, Teatr Zagłębia in Sosnowiec, thanks to director Aneta Głuch-Klucznik, presents the work on its own stage.

Ryszard Kapuściński’s “The Emperor” is not so much a story about the ruler of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I, as about the people surrounding him — his court — for it is on them that the whole narrative is focused; it is through their accounts that we come to know the figure of the Ethiopian monarch. Successive characters speak about the work they performed day to day at the king’s court, describing their duties or recounting other figures from the entourage. And so we have F., whose sole occupation was walking the imperial dog on its lead and wiping its urine from the shoes of dignitaries; A.M-M., who as a footman operated the doors to the Audience Hall; I.B., the purse-bearer, who carried behind the treasurer a bag filled with money; G.H-M., the imperial cuckoo, who by his bows signalled to the ruler the passing of time… There were also intelligence chiefs, students, and cushion-bearers — in all, a whole host of characters.

Ryszard Kapuściński to Become Patron of the Community Cultural Centre in Pawłów

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

[caption id=“attachment_2799” align=“aligncenter” width=“477”] His wife Alicja Kapuścińska attended the unveiling ceremony commemorating the Master’s connections with Pawłów (photo Jacek Barczyński)[/caption]

The Community Cultural Centre in Pawłów is to be named after Ryszard Kapuściński. It will be the first institution of this kind in Poland to bear the great writer’s name.

"The Emperor" in Chinese

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A press conference took place at the Polish Embassy in Beijing with the participation of Professor Wu Lan, who translated Ryszard Kapuściński’s “The Emperor” into Chinese. The ceremony was attended by the Polish Ambassador to China, Tadeusz Chomicki, outstanding translators of Polish literature, representatives of Chinese publishing circles, students of the Polish studies department of the Beijing Foreign Studies University, as well as Chinese and Polish media. This is already the second book by Ryszard Kapuściński translated by Professor Wu Lan. In 2009 “Travels with Herodotus” appeared in Chinese bookshops. The translator emphasised that Kapuściński’s objective view of Africa attests to the Poles’ openness to other cultures. Professor Wu Lan now plans to translate another book by the outstanding Polish reporter, “Imperium”. After the press conference Professor Wu Lan signed copies of “The Emperor” for the readers present at the Embassy.

皇帝 (Huángdì) — "The Emperor" in Chinese

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Adam Kajzer, June 2011

The Chinese edition of Ryszard Kapuściński’s The Emperor is one of the most important literary events in the world this year.

This is already the third book by Kapuściński to be translated into Chinese. In recent years, publishers in Taiwan have translated Imperium and Travels with Herodotus. In China itself, the translation of Kapuściński’s works is handled by translator Wu Lan. In addition to The Emperor, just now published, a Beijing publisher released Travels with Herodotus in 2009.

The Chinese Translation of "The Emperor" by Ryszard Kapuściński

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The Chinese translation of Ryszard Kapuściński’s “The Emperor”, rendered by Wu Lan — a Polish studies scholar who two years earlier had translated “Travels with Herodotus” for Chinese readers — has been published by the Beijing publishing house Xinxing (New Star).

This was announced to PAP by Andrzej Piskulak, a journalist and writer from Kielce, a friend of the translator Wu Lan.

“The appearance of the translation of ‘The Emperor’ has already aroused interest in Chinese literary circles. Negotiations are being conducted with the holders of the copyright, regarding the staging of ‘The Emperor’ as a theatrical production, as has been done in, among other places, Great Britain and Poland” — the man from Kielce quoted from a letter from the Chinese translator.

"A Treatise on Falling", Review of the Book "The Emperor"

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Andrzej W. Pawluczuk. Source: Literatura no. 9, p. 14, 1979

Every time I read a new book by Kapuściński, every time I took him to task for writing only about what happens far away from us. After his debut “Busz po polsku” his early reportages were already reporting from distant foreign parts. And they did so with an extraordinary sense of conditions there, of the mechanisms of power and corruption there, and with such splendid understanding of the exotic soul, that I would sometimes recognise in a Latin American faint with fear my own, frightened face. There grew in me then a grievance that I would read nothing about our own rough-hewn reality that would be equally gripping. Something written in that transparent language where one does not notice individual words and sentences but sees only whole scenes. Whole images from life, with their meanings already inscribed in them. With meanings so meaningful that from them it may sometimes follow that they have no meaning at all. I thought then, especially when reading “Christ with a Rifle on His Shoulder” and the reportages about Angola, that Kapuściński with particular relish delights in seeking out and tracking down the nonsenses and paradoxes of history. That he likes to undermine our European measure of the world — smoothed, clean, sated, contented. But when I recently read “The Soccer War”, which is a kind of synthesis of his previous books, I perceived something more.

"Ishmael Sails On", Review of the Book "The Emperor"

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Zbigniew Bauer. Source: Życie literackie no. 7/1979, p. 6. Date of publication: 1979-01-01

The writing of Ryszard Kapuściński is a phenomenon. That sounds high-flown, but the reviewer has no other way of putting it. The “phenomenality” of Kapuściński’s reportages is not only a question of their subject matter, style, language — in a word, of all that is a characteristic of a literary work. It also relates to the social reception of the books of the author of “Christ with a Rifle on His Shoulder”. It is extraordinarily rare for non-fiction literature to be able to cause such resonance, such controversy, and to enjoy such enormous popularity. Though admittedly — and here one must agree with opponents — this is also sometimes caused by fashion, fame, perhaps gossip, those quiet regulators of readers’ reactions.

"The Emperor Had a Fine Life", Review of the Book "The Emperor"

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Wojciech Giełżyński. Source: Nowe Książki no. 2, 1979, pp. 60–62. Date of publication: 1978-01-01

Once upon a time, in the legal days, when the Opole Festival was a splendid, living event teeming with surprises, the Piwnica pod Baranami appeared at the late-night cabaret, at that time in peak form. People were choking with convulsions of laughter, then again they froze in meditation and burst out squealing anew. This went on for a solid three or four hours. Until at the very end an extra, completely unknown girl suddenly appeared and sang “Black Angels”. That was Ewa Demarczyk; she had missed her train and arrived on the next one. Chance had directed a punchline that knocked everyone out.

"The Magician of Reportage", Review of the Book "The Emperor"

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Beata Nowacka. Source: Gazeta Wyborcza. Date of publication: 2002-06-22

When “The Emperor” landed on the desk of the editor-in-chief of the Pan publishing house, he resolved to reject the book without reading it.

The book did not look especially promising — a relation about the Ethiopian aristocrat Haile Selassie, ten years after his overthrow, written by an unknown Polish writer with a name composed of too many consonants and lost accents to be pronounceable.

A Treatise on Power, or "The Emperor" by Ryszard Kapuściński

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Artur Domosławski

From Tuesday in the news-stands: “The Emperor” by Ryszard Kapuściński — the next book in our twentieth-century collection. Not only did it launch the international career of the greatest Polish reporter; it also elevated reportage to the status of high literature. The very highest.

To write a note about Kapuściński’s “The Emperor” is like writing about Homer’s “Iliad”.

The American prose writer John Updike considered “The Emperor” a “magical reflection that often transforms itself into poetry and aphorism”. The review by that very writer, published in the American “New Yorker”, launched the international career of “The Emperor”. The year was 1981.

How I Came to the Idea of Translating "The Emperor" into English

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand. Source: http://alfaomega.webnode.com/products/ryszard-kapu/ Date of publication: 2010-03-09

It was March 1979; the aeroplane was flying over the Atlantic, and above the clouds things were for the time being fairly smooth and calm; it was only before the inland stopover at Gander in the Canadian province of Newfoundland that there were to be scenes of infernal proportions: three attempts at landing — the pilot changed his mind at about half a metre above the ground, pulling the plane up again — as well as terrible turbulence that almost prevented the plane’s wheels from making contact with the landing place, a runway covered in a thick layer of snow. For the moment one could enjoy the reading of a new book. Someone among friends, just before departure, had put into my hands “The Emperor” by Ryszard Kapuściński, saying that this was the book everyone in Warsaw was reading at the moment. He added that in Poland it was then compulsory reading, interpreted as a text with a double meaning. Ostensibly about the court of Emperor Haile Selassie, but really about the red court of the Central Committee (of the Polish United Workers’ Party) or, going lower, of the Provincial Committee or the District Committee. Ostensibly about the mechanisms of servility and toadying in the imperial chambers of Ethiopia, but really about those very mechanisms in the offices and antechambers and corridors of power in the People’s Republic of Poland and about those gathered around power.

Newsweek Polska Library of Thought — 235 Books of the Century: "The Emperor"

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Newsweek. Source: Newsweek. Date of publication: 2005-03-01

“Manuscripts don’t burn” — wrote Mikhail Bulgakov in “The Master and Margarita”. And since then we often repeat that sentence, seeking in it confirmation of our faith that literary truth always triumphs, that it is stronger than the inattention of readers, than the persecutions of dictators. Even — than the passage of time" — so begins the preface to the Newsweek Polska supplement “235 Books of the Century”, authored by Piotr Bratkowski. It presents a proposal for the library of the contemporary intellectual. It includes titles from the last sixty years, among them: The Captive Mind by Czesław Miłosz, A World Apart by Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, Rising ‘44 by Norman Davies, and The Emperor by Ryszard Kapuściński.

Press Reviews of the Book "The Emperor"

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

• 1979 Nowe Książki no. 2 pp. 60–62 The Emperor Had a Fine Life. Review by Wojciech Giełżyński.

• 1979 Opole no. 5 pp. 24–25 Power, or the Art of Seduction. Review by Jolanta Kasprowicz.

• 1979 Nowe Książki no. 5 pp. 65–66 An Under-Praised Bestseller. Review by Agata Fałnowa.

• 1979 Zwierciadło no. 5 p. 21 Review by Mieczysław Machnicki.

• 1979 Radar no. 5 pp. 24–25 A Universal “Emperor”. Review by Andrzej Szulc.

Ryszard Kapuściński on the Book "The Emperor"

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

“You can write only one such book in your life. It is a certain idea that cannot be repeated, because if one were to repeat it, it would already be a failure. ‘The Emperor’ arose from a very simple situation. I was already then a reporter who had been working in Africa for over ten years. I had been writing reportages, better, worse, various kinds. When I was sent to cover the Ethiopian revolt, it was a normal military coup d’état.

The Emperor — A Pamphlet on Totalitarianism. Review of the Book "The Emperor"

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Maciej Skórczewski. Date of publication: 2000-02-01

Ethiopia, mid-1970s. Night, silence, tension and fear palpable in the air. Somewhere in the remotest corner of Addis Ababa, in the quietest house, in deep conspiracy, an interview begins — or rather a long monologue of witnesses. People who, on account of what they did in the past, are condemned to constant hiding. Outside, a revolution is progressing. The country is gripped by civil war; a struggle for power is being waged. A decisive advantage is being gained by the mutinous army, the army that until recently served its ruler faithfully — the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I. It is the year 1975; the storm calms down, a second war begins — a war in which victors hunt the vanquished, a war in which death is delivered not by technology but by an “ordinary” denunciation by a neighbour. In such conspiratorial conditions we meet people who until recently served the highest authority in Ethiopia — Emperor Haile Selassie I. And so begins another and one of the finest books by Ryszard Kapuściński, entitled “The Emperor”. A book that has been universally recognised as a pamphlet on totalitarianism.

The Emperor. List of Editions.

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Edition I Year of publication: 1978 Print run: 35,000 copies Price: 26 zł

Edition II Year of publication: 1980 Print run: 40,000 copies Price: 26 zł

Edition III Year of publication: 1982 Print run: 35,000 copies Price: 60 zł

Edition IV Year of publication: 1987 Print run: 50,000 copies Price: 220 zł

Edition V Year of publication: 1988 Print run: 30,000 copies Series: vol. 3 “Wrzenie świata”

Edition VI Year of publication: 1990 Print run: 50,000 copies Series: vol. 3 “Wrzenie świata”

The Lawyer Demanded Notarised Documents from Ethiopia

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Author: William R. Brand. Source: http://alfaomega.webnode.com/products/ryszard-kapu/ Date of publication: 2010-03-09

We met Ryszard Kapuściński in Kraków, on a muggy day, in late spring 1981. In the pocket of his beige jacket he had a pack of “Radomskie” cigarettes. He said to me: “With that beard you look like a mujahideen.”

He was not an author frequently published outside Poland, and Kasia and I had never before translated a whole book. After nine months of trying, we still had no publisher and had translated only one third of “The Emperor”. We would probably have given up, if not for one thing he said to us that day.

Theatrical Productions of "The Emperor"

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

“The Emperor” has also been staged many times. Theatrical adaptations (premieres):

• 24.11.1978 Stefan Jaracz Theatre, Łódź, directed by Jerzy Hutek • 04.1979 Small Stage of the Powszechny Theatre, Warsaw, directed by Jerzy Hutek • 15.01.1981 J. Szaniawski Drama Theatre, Wałbrzych, directed by Kazimierz Tałaj • 1981 “Format” Stage, Kraków, directed by J. Kopczewski • 1981 Szaniawski Drama Theatre, Płock • 1983 Adekwatny Theatre, Warsaw, directed by J. Wócik, monodrama by Magda Teresa Wójcik • 27.10.1987 Studio Theatre, Warsaw — Polish version of the London production • 11.03.1987 The Royal Court Theatre, London. Directed by Jonathan Miller and Michael Hastings • 02.02.1981 TVP Television Theatre, Studio of Facts and Sensations, directed by Jerzy Hutek • 14.04.2002 Adekwatny Theatre, Warsaw, directed by Magda Teresa Wójcik, monodrama by Jolanta Olszewska • 1980 Polish Radio Theatre, adaptation by E. Marcinkowska • 1995 opera version, Opera Festival, Palatsi (Finland), performed by Soronlinna • 2002 Drama Theatre in Warsaw. Directed by Magda Teresa Wójcik, performed by Jolanta Olszewska

Narration in "The Emperor" by Ryszard Kapuściński

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Magdalena Horodecka (University of Gdańsk) Source: Pamiętnik Literacki XCVIII, 2007, no. 3, pp. 21–45

Pobierz plik

Pamiętnik Literacki XCVIII (2007), no. 3, pp. 21–45

Magdalena Horodecka

Narration in »The Emperor« by Ryszard Kapuściński

Each reproduction of reality in a work is its creative interpretation through text, and each interpretation is a specific form of reproduction. To speak paradoxically: reality cannot be reproduced in text, but neither can it not be reproduced.