In the Pit of History

Author: Neal Ascherson
Source: The New York Review of Books, June 21, 2001
Link: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2001/06/21/in-the-pit-of-history/

Editorial summary by kapuscinski.info. The text below is a summary based on the original article. The full article is available at The New York Review of Books (a subscription may be required).

A long review of the English edition of The Shadow of the Sun by Neal Ascherson — the British commentator, expert on Central Europe and historian of Poland. Ascherson sets Kapuscinski’s book against Ann Jones’s Looking for Lovedu, using the pair to show two very different ways of writing about Africa.

Kapuscinski’s method, as Ascherson describes it: instead of seeking out power and official sources, Kapuscinski talked to people in markets and followed chance acquaintances back to their villages. He recorded the material texture of African life with unusual attentiveness — a plastic container as an emblem of modernisation, a pothole in Onitsha as an economic and social centre.

Ascherson traces an evolution. Kapuscinski began in socialist idealism and went on to watch the disappointments that followed independence — corruption, coups, dictators — but instead of turning to resignation he found what Ascherson calls the innate courage and resourcefulness of African society.

Reservations: Ascherson notes that Kapuscinski sometimes falls back on troubling generalisations about “the African” and that he simplifies colonial history, particularly the origins of slavery. He compares him to Martha Gellhorn — a journalist for whom literary artistry mattered as much as reporting.

In 2010, after Domoslawski’s biography appeared, Ascherson publicly defended Kapuscinski, distinguishing his books from his news dispatches and questioning whether the standards of hard reportage should be applied to literary non-fiction at all.