Ryszard Kapuściński on the book "Another Day of Life"

“All my earlier books were collections of reportage from different countries or different periods. Another Day of Life is my first real book. It holds my experiences and reflections from the beginnings of the civil war in Angola — a war that is still going on today. That was 1973. Revolution broke out in Portugal and Salazar’s military regime was overthrown. The revolutionary council declared the colonies independent. One of them was Angola. In Angola, as in other African countries, there are a great many nations, ethnic groups, tribes and so on. That was one of the reasons the civil war broke out. A fight began, chaotic and merciless, and it horrified the whole of Europe. When everyone was fleeing Angola, I went there.

I went thinking that I would never come back, but I believed I ought to be there. At that moment it was one of the key events in the world. For a time I was the only foreign correspondent there. I filed dispatches for the Polish Press Agency, and out of my own experiences and my own observations the material for this book gathered itself. Another Day of Life is a very personal book. It is not about the war, not about the warring sides, but about being lost, about the unknown, about not knowing what will become of you. There were situations there in which a man effectively knew he would not live. And each day you would say, with relief: well, another day of life behind me, one more ahead. But no more than that.”

Ryszard Kapuściński