Ryszard Kapuściński on the book "The Shadow of the Sun"

“The Shadow of the Sun (…) is the first in a cycle of summing-up books I intend to write. I spent forty years in the countries of the Third World. The time has come to sum up my experience of those continents and to show their history and their evolution. This is reportage that takes place in the present and in the past at once. I want to bring out everything that has changed and is still changing in these cultures. I simply want to present history in its dynamic transformation.

After The Shadow of the Sun I intend to describe Asia and Latin America in the same retrospective form of reportage — those non-European continents where my life as a reporter was spent. The main principle of my writing is to write only about what I have seen, felt and lived through myself. It is impossible to write a book about a continent as a whole, because the wealth of its culture is too great. My way of giving the most credible and the fullest description is to confirm everything through my own observation and experience. That gives me a sense of strength in writing. In good prose you can feel the author’s certainty. The reader needs an anchor; he has to know that what the author says comes out of his own experience.” Ryszard Kapuściński