Articles about Kapuściński on kapuscinski.info

Articles about Kapuściński on kapuscinski.infohttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/Recent content in Articles about Kapuściński on kapuscinski.infoHugoen-USMon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000Fact, Fiction and Kapuscinskihttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/fact-fiction-and-kapuscinski-mackey-nyt/Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/fact-fiction-and-kapuscinski-mackey-nyt/<p>Author: Robert Mackey<br> Source: The New York Times — The Lede Blog, March 8, 2010<br> Link: <a href="https://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/fact-fiction-and-kapuscinski/">https://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/fact-fiction-and-kapuscinski/</a></p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Editorial summary by kapuscinski.info.</strong> The text below is a summary based on the original article. The full article is available at the NYT (a subscription may be required).</p> </blockquote> <hr> <p>An article published on The Lede, the New York Times blog devoted to media analysis and running events, immediately after the Polish publication of Artur Domoslawski’s <em>Kapuscinski Non-Fiction</em> in March 2010.</p>A Personal Tribute A unique worldview for the common manhttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/a-personal-tribute-a-unique-worldview-for-the-common-man/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/a-personal-tribute-a-unique-worldview-for-the-common-man/<p><strong>Author:Michael Werbowski,</strong></p> <p><strong>Source:Ohmy News</strong></p> <p>A few days ago, a citizen reporter wrote about the reporter and great satirist Art Buchwald who died recently. I thought it appropriate to follow up with a personal tribute to Ryszard Kapuscinski, a worldly gentleman and great reporter who died Tuesday of a heart attack. He was a man whose writings gave me a passion for travel, world affairs and the thrill of “being there” where events happen.</p>I Had to Experience Everything for Myselfhttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/i-had-to-experience-everything-for-myself/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/i-had-to-experience-everything-for-myself/<p>Remembering Ryszard Kapuscinski, who left journalism to carve out a special place in the literary landscape.</p> <p>In 1966 at the height of the Nigerian civil war, an unassuming-looking Polish journalist by the name of Ryszard Kapuscinski set out on a seemingly insane journey. He left the relative safety of Lagos and drove straight into the region of the fiercest fighting, on a road where any traveler could be summarily executed by trigger-happy, machete-wielding guards at any number of improvised roadblocks set up by roaming gangs of both warring parties. “I was driving along a road where they say no white man can come back alive,” Kapuscinski wrote later in his book “The Soccer War.” “I was driving to see if a white man could, because I had to experience everything for myself.”</p>It Was a Small Dog, a Japanese Breedhttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/it-was-a-small-dog-a-japanese-breed/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/it-was-a-small-dog-a-japanese-breed/<p>In those unbelievable times ordinary Poles got up at dawn to stand in line in front of a bookstore, to hunt down their dream book. They followed world politics avidly, and knew more about the Third World than the British and French combined.</p> <p>You could say that in communist Poland, people hunted for books because everything was in short supply, while rooting for Patrice Lumumba, concern for the fate of Allende or following the stormy life of Che Guevara was a substitute for the complete lack of political attractions in a country ruled by communists.</p>Kapuscinski Reportage Rememberedhttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/kapuscinski-reportage-remembered/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/kapuscinski-reportage-remembered/<p>Ryszard Kapuscinski’s chief metier was Africa and Latin America in the throes of violent revolution. As a roving foreign correspondent for Poland’s state press agency for more than two decades, he likely witnessed more tumult than any of his peers. But Kapuscinski, who died Tuesday at age 74, was much more than a man who took great risks to get the best insights - heading into the bush when colleagues were fleeing on the last planes out.</p>Kapuscinski: A disptach from the late master of reportagehttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/kapuscinski-a-disptach-from-the-late-master-of-reportage/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/kapuscinski-a-disptach-from-the-late-master-of-reportage/<p>No reporter ever brought the world’s trouble spots to life with the vividness of the great Ryszard Kapuscinski. To mark his death this week, Ian Jack recalls his late friend’s ‘passionate curiosity’, and we publish the opening chapter of one of the Polish writer’s most acclaimed works, ‘The Soccer War’</p> <p>A few years ago a party to celebrate the publication of Ryszard Kapuscinski’s book on Africa was held, properly enough, in the Polish Club in South Kensington. A few of us then walked to dinner with him at a restaurant in Kensington High Street; no more than a luxurious toddle, but someone complained that a taxi would have been a better idea, that it was really quite far. Obviously, said Kapuscinski of the complainant, he never went on a route march with the Polish army in Stalinist times.</p>Master Reporter Signs Offhttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/master-reporter-signs-off/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/master-reporter-signs-off/<p>Ryszard Kapuściński, one of the best known Polish journalists and writers, died in Warsaw after a long illness Jan. 23. He was active until the last days of his life, meeting his readers and planning work on new books. He would have been 75 on March 4.</p> <p>Kapuściński made his first trip as a reporter to China in 1956, sent by the Warsaw-based newspaper Sztandar Młodych. Later, he made trips to Africa, South America and Asia, which resulted in a number of highly regarded works. His books are read across the world and Kapuściński is considered one of the most important literary witnesses of his times.</p>Obituaries: Ryszard Kapuscinski, a chronicler of conflicthttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/obituaries-ryszard-kapuscinski-a-chronicler-of-conflict/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/obituaries-ryszard-kapuscinski-a-chronicler-of-conflict/<p>ANKARA: Ryszard Kapuscinski, a globe-trotting journalist from Poland whose writing, often tinged with magical realism, brought him critical acclaim and a wide international readership, died Tuesday in Warsaw. He was 74.</p> <p>His death, in a hospital, was reported by PAP, the Polish news agency for which he had worked. No cause was given, but he was known to have had cancer. Kapuscinski spent four decades observing and writing about conflict throughout the developing world.</p>On Kapuscinski gonzo orientalismhttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/on-kapuscinski-gonzo-orientalism/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/on-kapuscinski-gonzo-orientalism/<p>“The European mind is willing to acknowledge its limitations, accept its limitations. It is a sceptical mind. The spirit of criticism does not exist in other cultures. They are proud, believing that what they have is perfect.” – Ryszard Kapuscinski</p> <p>“The greatest mind to bear upon Africa since Conrad.” – The Evening Standard on Ryszard Kapuscinski</p> <p>I have tried, just once in my life, to be an Angry Black Man. I planned a picket in New York City against a man I love to hate – Ryszard Kapuscinski. He was going to speak at a conference organised by American PEN. Nobody seemed to want to join me. There were better things to do in New York, like drinking – I do not lie – a hibiscus juice and chilli margarita. So I got drunk.</p>Polish chronicler of Third World Kapuscinski dieshttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/polish-chronicler-of-third-world-kapuscinski-dies/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/polish-chronicler-of-third-world-kapuscinski-dies/<p>WARSAW(Reuters) - Polish journalist and author Ryszard Kapuscinski, whose chronicles of the world’s trouble spots won him an international reputation, died on Tuesday, the PAP news agency said. He was 74.</p> <p>From 1959 to 1981, Kapuscinski covered the globe’s poorest and most dangerous places as a correspondent for PAP. He also wrote books about Africa’s emergence from colonialism – and its descent into turmoil and war.</p> <p>Best-known among his 19 books was “The Emperor”, an account of the downfall of Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie told from inside the castle walls. He witnessed 27 coups and revolutions, befriended the likes of Che Guevara, and was sentenced to death four times, according to his American publisher, Alfred A. Knopf.</p>Polish Writer Ryszard Kapuscinski Dieshttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/polish-writer-ryszard-kapuscinski-dies/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/polish-writer-ryszard-kapuscinski-dies/<p>WARSAW, Poland (AP) – Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish writer and journalist who gained international acclaim for his books chronicling wars, coups and revolutions in Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world, died following heart surgery, his publisher said. He was 74.</p> <p>Kapuscinski died Tuesday at Warsaw’s Banacha hospital, said Marek Zakowski, president of the Czytelnik publishing house, which published several of Kapuscinski’s books and is editing a new one, ‘‘Lappidarium 6.’’ Zakowski declined to give any more details about the surgery or the precise cause of death.</p>Polish writer who turned reportage into literaturehttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/polish-writer-who-turned-reportage-into-literature/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/polish-writer-who-turned-reportage-into-literature/<p>Ryszard Kapuscinski, the celebrated Polish journalist who earned a worldwide reputation for his reports from Africa, Asia and Latin America, has died at the age of 74.</p> <p>Polish and non-Polish journalists alike acknowledged that nobody captured the mood of the developing world, especially of post-colonial Africa, better than Kapuscinski, who died in Warsaw on Tuesday after a long illness.</p> <p>Whether pricking the pretensions of the court of Ethiopia’s emperor Haile Selassie, or turning the spectacle of the decaying Angolan city of Luanda into a metaphor for the continent, he brought a new dimension to journalism, combining shrewd observation with sympathetic insights. Together with fine writing, albeit sometimes idiosyncratic, these qualities “raised his reportage to the status of literature”, as long-time admirer Michael Ignatieff put it. He was nominated many times for the Nobel literature prize, but the call from Stockholm never came.</p>Prominent Polish writer and journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski dies at 74https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/prominent-polish-writer-and-journalist-ryszard-kapuscinski-dies-at-74/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/prominent-polish-writer-and-journalist-ryszard-kapuscinski-dies-at-74/<p>WARSAW, Poland: Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish writer and journalist who gained international acclaim for his books chronicling wars, coups and revolutions in Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world, has died. He was 74.</p> <p>Kapuscinski died Tuesday at Warsaw’s Banacha hospital of a heart attack following an operation, Czeslaw Apiecionek, one of Kapuscinski’s literary agents, told The Associated Press. He would give no other details. But a friend of Kapuscinski, Miroslaw Ikonowicz, was quoted by the news agency PAP as saying Kapuscinski died of a heart attack after undergoing an operation on a tumor on Friday.</p>Ryszard Kapuscinski Master of literary reportagehttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/ryszard-kapuscinski-master-of-literary-reportage/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/ryszard-kapuscinski-master-of-literary-reportage/<p>Ryszard Kapuscinski, journalist: born Pinsk, Poland 4 March 1932; married 1952 Alicja Mielczarek (one daughter); died Warsaw 23 January 2007.</p> <p>The Polish reporter Ryszard Kapuscinski was the 20th century’s most telling spokesman for the millions of ordinary people who are trapped in the vagaries of authoritarian regimes.</p> <p>He could have done it anywhere, but fate and the limited budgets of his Polish employers took him, chiefly, to Africa. There, he told the story of Haile Selassie through the anecdotes of a man at the palace gates whose job was to wipe visitors’ shoes after meetings with the Ethiopian emperor and his incontinent dog, Lulu. In Tanzania, political upheaval was brought into perspective by a report from a village where all that mattered to the peasants was the long wait for rain.</p>Ryszard Kapuscinski, Polish Writer of Shimmering Allegories and News, Dies at 74https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/ryszard-kapuscinski-polish-writer-of-shimmering-allegories-and-news-dies-at-74/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/ryszard-kapuscinski-polish-writer-of-shimmering-allegories-and-news-dies-at-74/<p>Ryszard Kapuscinski, a globe-trotting journalist from Poland whose writing, often tinged with magical realism, brought him critical acclaim and a wide international readership, died yesterday in Warsaw. He was 74. His death, at a hospital, was reported by PAP, the Polish news agency for which he had worked. No cause was given, but he was known to have had cancer.</p> <p>Mr. Kapuscinski (pronounced ka-poos-CHIN-ski) spent some four decades observing and writing about conflict throughout the developing world. He witnessed 27 coups and revolutions. He spent his working days gathering information for the terse dispatches he sent to PAP, often from places like Ougadougou or Zanzibar. At night, he worked on longer, descriptive essays with phantasmagoric touches that went far beyond the details of the day’s events, using allegory and metaphors to convey what was happening.</p>Ryszard Kapuscinski: A Worlds Reporterhttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/ryszard-kapuscinski-a-worlds-reporter/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/ryszard-kapuscinski-a-worlds-reporter/<p>“Why am I a writer? Why have I risked my life so many times, come so close to dying? Is it to report the weirdness? To earn my salary? Mine is not a vocation, it’s a mission. I wouldn’t subject myself to these dangers if I didn’t feel that there was something overwhelmingly important–about history, about ourselves–that I felt compelled to get across. This is more than journalism.”</p> <p>--Ryszard Kapuscinski interview by Bill Bufford (“Granta Magazine”).</p>The Illuminated Letters Of a Polish Journalisthttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/the-illuminated-letters-of-a-polish-journalist/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/the-illuminated-letters-of-a-polish-journalist/<p>Maybe there’s something about those brutal winters on the high northern plains of Eastern Europe, stuck defenseless between Berlin and Moscow, the peasant huts and concrete apartments smelling of dank clothes, lost hope and boiled cabbage.</p> <p>Maybe there’s something that, every so often, kicks a young writer in the gut, and produces great wanderlust or literary genius or, in the case of Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski and his literary predecessor Joseph Conrad, both.</p>Third World chronicler Kapuscinski dieshttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/third-world-chronicler-kapuscinski-dies/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/third-world-chronicler-kapuscinski-dies/<p>WARSAW, Poland(Reuters) – Polish journalist and author Ryszard Kapuscinski, whose chronicles of the world’s trouble spots won him an international reputation, died on Tuesday, the PAP news agency said. He was 74.</p> <p>From 1959 to 1981, Kapuscinski covered the globe’s poorest and most dangerous places as a correspondent for PAP. He also wrote books about Africa’s emergence from colonialism – and its descent into turmoil and war. Best-known among his 19 books was “The Emperor”, an account of the downfall of Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie told from inside the castle walls.</p>War Correspondent, Author Ryszard Kapuscinskihttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/war-correspondent-author-ryszard-kapuscinski/Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/war-correspondent-author-ryszard-kapuscinski/<p>Ryszard Kapuscinski, 74, a danger-courting Polish journalist and widely translated author who covered 27 revolutions and was among the most celebrated war correspondents of his generation, died Jan. 23 at Banacha Hospital in Warsaw after a heart attack. He also had cancer.</p> <p>With prose that was punchy and lyrical, and in which he was often a central figure amid the action, he became a foremost chronicler of the developing world in his books. Likened to a modern-day nomad, he carried only a camera, a clean shirt and money. “The less you have the better for you,” he said, “because to have is to be killed.”</p>Fellow Travelershttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/fellow-travelers-morrison-time/Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/fellow-travelers-morrison-time/<p>Author: Donald Morrison<br> Source: Time Magazine, June 7, 2007</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Editorial summary by kapuscinski.info.</strong> The text below is a summary based on the original article. The full article is available in the Time Magazine archive.</p> </blockquote> <hr> <p>An article published five months after Kapuscinski’s death, placing him within the broader tradition of travelling journalists who shaped how Western societies understood the Third World in the twentieth century.</p> <p>Morrison — for many years Time’s culture editor — sets Kapuscinski alongside figures such as Tiziano Terzani and Martha Gellhorn as a representative of a vanishing species: the journalist who spends years coming to know one place or one subject rather than hopping between events.</p>Kapuściński, More Magical than Realhttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/kapuscinski-more-magical-than-real-new-statesman/Mon, 12 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/kapuscinski-more-magical-than-real-new-statesman/<p>Author: Michela Wrong, John Pilger<br> Source: New Statesman, February 12, 2007<br> Link: <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/media/2007/02/kapuscinski-journalism-africa">https://www.newstatesman.com/media/2007/02/kapuscinski-journalism-africa</a></p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Editorial summary by kapuscinski.info.</strong> The text below is a summary based on the original article. The full article is available at the New Statesman.</p> </blockquote> <hr> <p>An article published three weeks after Kapuscinski’s death by the New Statesman — among the first interventions by experienced Western correspondents in the argument over his legacy.</p> <p>Michela Wrong — the British journalist and author of reportage from Congo, Kenya and Rwanda — puts the question that had been avoided for years: was the enthusiasm for Kapuscinski in Western newsrooms based partly on readers’ ignorance of Africa? Where the writing was beautiful, the details went unchecked. Wrong knows the continent too well to miss the simplifications.</p>Ryszard Kapuściński: Defending his literary licensehttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/defending-literary-license-orourke-slate/Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/defending-literary-license-orourke-slate/<p>Author: Meghan O’Rourke<br> Source: Slate Magazine, January 30, 2007<br> Link: <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2007/01/ryszard-kapuscinski-defending-his-literary-license.html">https://slate.com/culture/2007/01/ryszard-kapuscinski-defending-his-literary-license.html</a></p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Editorial summary by kapuscinski.info.</strong> The text below is a summary based on the original article. The full article is available free of charge at Slate.</p> </blockquote> <hr> <p>A reply to Jack Shafer’s <em>The Lies of Ryszard Kapuscinski</em>, published five days later by the same magazine. O’Rourke — a literary critic and poet — does not defend Kapuscinski at any cost, but she questions whether the standards of hard news reportage are the right ones to apply to his work.</p>A Poet Among Journalistshttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/a-poet-among-journalists/Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/a-poet-among-journalists/<p>source: World Press Review archive source: info-poland.buffalo.edu</p> <hr> <p>A Poet Among Journalists</p> <p>“More than anything, one is struck by the light,” writes Ryszard Kapuscinski in The Shadow of the Sun, his new book on Africa. “Brightness everywhere…We discard overcoats, peel off sweaters. It’s the first gesture of initiation we, the people of the North, perform upon arrival in Africa.”</p> <p>Kapuscinski, who was born in Poland in 1932, has spent his career chronicling political shifts in the Third World. He began as a foreign correspondent for the Polish Press Agency, which could afford to send only one reporter to each continent. “That was an advantage,” he recalled in an interview at London’s Institute for Contemporary Art. “It took me from place to place, from revolution to revolution.”</p>Africa's Year of Coups and Criseshttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/africas-year-of-coups-and-crises/Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/africas-year-of-coups-and-crises/<p>Author: Ryszard Kapuściński source: Compass archive source: info-poland.buffalo.edu</p> <hr> <p>Compass Vol. 14 #1, Kapuscinski Article</p> <p>Dossier: Vietnam and Africa, Volume 14 #1</p> <p>Africa’s Year of Coups and Crises</p> <p>by Ryszard Kapuscinski</p> <p>Ghana</p> <p>On February 24, a coup d’état shook Ghana. That same day, President Nkrumah’s plane landed in Beijing. Someone handed him a slip of paper telling him of the revolt. He shrugged his shoulders, not believing it.</p> <p>The overthrow was inflamed by the West. The day before the coup, the British had instructed their compatriots to leave Flag Staff House and its surroundings, where Colonel Kotoka’s brigade was skirmishing with Nkrumah’s guard. But talk of inflaming leaves out the half of it.</p>At Play in the Bush of Ghostshttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/at-play-in-the-bush-of-ghosts/Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/at-play-in-the-bush-of-ghosts/<p>Author: John Ryle source: Times Literary Supplement archive source: info-poland.buffalo.edu</p> <hr> <p>At play in the bush of ghosts Tropical baroque, African reality and the work of Ryszard Kapuscinski</p> <p>by JOHN RYLE</p> <p>Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Shadow of the Sun, trans Klara Glowczewska 336pp, Penguin, 2001</p> <p>IN A CAREER EXTENDING over four decades, Ryszard Kapuściński has published accounts of his homeland, Poland, of travels in Iran and the former Soviet Union, and a collection of reportage from third-world countries including Honduras, El Salvador, Chile and Bolivia. His principal subject, however, from early in his working life, has been Africa. Africa is where, in the late 1950s, in his mid-twenties, after a brief spell in India and Pakistan, he began his career as a foreign correspondent, working for the official Polish state news agency. In the 1960s, he covered the early years of independence and the first of the post-colonial civil wars that have ravaged the continent ever since. In the 1970s he revisited these conflicts in a sequence of works of reflective reportage, works in which he transformed himself from a journalist into an author of international repute.</p>Bus Rideshttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/bus-rides-economist-review/Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/bus-rides-economist-review/<p>source: The Economist archive source: info-poland.buffalo.edu</p> <hr> <p>The Shadow of the Sun.</p> <p>By Ryszard Kapuscinski.</p> <p>Knopf; 325 pages; $25. Allen Lane, The Penguin Press; £18.99</p> <p>LIKE a mounted cavalryman taking on a tank, Ryszard Kapuscinski charged into Africa waving his Polish sword, carrying less baggage than rival commentators. Since his own nation had been comprehensively colonised over the centuries, he was burdened with no post-colonial guilt, no anxiety to compensate for past wrongs and quite a different perspective on the cold war, whose skirmishes were then beginning to be fought out across the continent.</p>From Reporting to Literaturehttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/from-reporting-to-literature/Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/from-reporting-to-literature/<p>source: Rzeczpospolita (tłumaczenie) archive source: info-poland.buffalo.edu</p> <hr> <p>Ryszard Kapuscinki: From Reporting to Literature</p> <p>Ryszard Kapuscinki: From Reporting to Literature</p> <p>A great reporter inevitably becomes a writer - the author of “The Soccer War,” “The Emperor,” “Shah of Shahs” and ““Imperium” is the best example of this. He has long ago crossed to the side of literature, which is not to say that he has become absorbed by “walks through fiction’s grove.” In his writing he continues to be a reporter, a historian, an anthropologist of culture, and a political scientist, but sometimes also a philosopher and a poet.</p>Kapuściński — New York Times Collected Reviewshttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/kapuscinski-new-york-times-collected-reviews/Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/kapuscinski-new-york-times-collected-reviews/<p>source: New York Times archive source: info-poland.buffalo.edu via arlindo-correia.com</p> <hr> <p>THE SOCCER WAR</p> <p>Dispatches From a Secret Continent</p> <p>Ryszard Kapuscinski is celebrated for two books on the third world, “The Emperor,” which described the last days of the court of the Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, and “Shah of Shahs,” about the downfall of the Pahlevi regime in Iran. “The Soccer War” is part of the raw material from which his earlier books were made, a collection of essays and notes based on his 22 years as a reporter working for the Polish Press Agency.</p>One World, Two Civilizationshttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/one-world-two-civilizations/Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/one-world-two-civilizations/<p>Author: Ryszard Kapuściński source: New Perspectives Quarterly, Spring 1986 archive source: info-poland.buffalo.edu</p> <hr> <p>One World, Two Civilizations</p> <p>As a foreign correspondent for the Polish Press Agency, Ryszard Kapuscinski covered civil wars and revolutions in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East for twenty years. He also wrote for the magazine KULTURA until it was closed down by the Polish authorities. At present, be lives in Warsaw.</p> <p>Kapuscinski’s most recent books include THE EMPEROR an account of the fall of Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in 1974 and SHAH OF SHAHS, an account of the Iranian revolution and the collapse of Shah Reza Pahlavi’s regime.</p>One World, Two Civilizations (2002)https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/one-world-two-civilizations-2002/Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/one-world-two-civilizations-2002/<p>Author: Ryszard Kapuściński source: New Perspectives Quarterly, Winter 2002 archive source: info-poland.buffalo.edu</p> <hr> <p>One World, Two Civilizations</p> <p>Ryszard Kapuscinski, a member of NPQ’s advisory board and author of such works of literary journalism as Shah of Shahs, The Emperor, The Soccer War and Imperium, is the war correspondent extraodinaire. Long before CNN cast its occasional spotlight on Rwanda or Somalia, Kapuscinski had been roaming the backwaters of the planet for decades as a reporter for the Polish Press Agency, documenting the awakening, and later the historical paralysis, of what we used to call “the Third World.”</p>Our Man in Africahttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/our-man-in-africa/Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/our-man-in-africa/<p>source: Powell’s Books archive source: info-poland.buffalo.edu</p> <hr> <p>Our Man in Africa</p> <p>A Review by Frank Bures</p> <p>Ryszard Kapuscinski has been roaming the world for forty years now, dodging bullets, running roadblocks, being sentenced to death (four times), having drinks with world leaders mostly Third World leaders and taking notes. The Polish journalist’s books and stories are filled with drama worthy of Hollywood.</p> <p>There is plenty of that in his new book, Shadow of the Sun, about his four-decade affair with Africa, a collection of anecdotes, essays and reportage. In it he also shows that he’s still a master of the style he helped create what he calls the “New Literature,” in which the writer is a character. Ever since he arrived there in Africa in 1957, Kapuscinski has been more participant than voyeur, so Kapuscinski’s Africa in his new book is neither a giant zoo nor a museum of misery. It is far more simple and infinitely more complex than the Africa portrayed in most books: It is a place where people live.</p>The Shadow of the Sun — Collected Reviewshttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/the-shadow-of-the-sun-collected-reviews/Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/the-shadow-of-the-sun-collected-reviews/<p>source: New York Times, Newsweek archive source: info-poland.buffalo.edu via arlindo-correia.com</p> <hr> <p>Ryszard Kapuscinski</p> <p>8-6-2001</p> <p>Ryszard Kapuscinski</p> <p>(1932</p> <ul> <li>)</li> </ul> <p>Born in Pinsk, now in Belarus, in 1932, Kapuscinski is the pre-eminent writer among Polish reporters. After honing his skills on domestic stories, he traveled throughout the world and reported on several dozen wars, coups and revolutions in America, Asia, and especially in Africa, where he witnessed the liberation from colonialism. He has devoted several books to Africa, including his latest, the forthcoming Ebony.</p>The Shadow of the Sun — Pittsburgh Post Gazette Reviewhttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/the-shadow-of-the-sun-pittsburgh-post-gazette/Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/the-shadow-of-the-sun-pittsburgh-post-gazette/<p>source: Pittsburgh Post Gazette archive source: info-poland.buffalo.edu</p> <hr> <p>‘The Shadow of the Sun’ by Ryszard Kapuscinski</p> <p>‘The Shadow of the Sun’ by Ryszard Kapuscinski</p> <p>Polish correspondent elegantly chronicles Africa in its strife and beauty</p> <p>Friday, May 25, 2001</p> <p>By John Freeman</p> <p>The Shadow of the Sun</p> <p>By Ryszard Kapuscinski Knopf $25.00</p> <p>In 1957, the Polish Press Agency appointed 25-year-old Ryszard Kapuscinski its first full-time correspondent in Africa, a continent then on the brink of a massive independence movement. While Kapuscinski would eventually cover conflicts in Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, he would always return to Africa to hitch rides on passing trucks, wander with nomads through the desert, be the guest of peasants of the tropical savannah. In his sumptuous and meditative new work of nonfiction, he distills his best adventures into a book that is part travelogue and part history, a consummate prose poem to the enduring strangeness and beauty of Africa. Landscapes require expert storytelling to bring them to life, and time and again, Kapuscinski rises to the challenge. Arriving in Kumasi, Ghana, in the late 1950s, he describes the incandescent quality of African light. In reality, the sun comes out as if it were a ball catapulted into the air. We suddenly see a fiery sphere, so near to us that we cant help experiencing a frisson of fear. … Its as if all night long everyone was crouching on his starters blocks and now, at that shot of sunlight … the streets are full of people, the shops are open, the fires and kitchens are smoking. Unlike other foreign correspondents, Kapuscinski lived in ghettos with other Africans, exposing himself to theft and intimidation but gleaning revelatory stories of everyday citizens. In Lagos, Nigeria, where he inhabited an airless two-room flat, he witnessed a brutal beating administered to a young boy caught stealing bananas: Policemen here carry large wooden clubs with which they beat offenders, striking them with all their might. The boy is lying in the street now, cringing, curled up, trying to shield himself from the blows. A crowd has gathered. By befriending his neighbors, the journalist secured passage into some of the continents remote and dangerous regions, from the deserts of Somalia, where he joined a tribe on its pilgrimage to a well, to the northern reaches of Uganda, where bandits ambushed his motorcade. Along the way, Kapuscinski was felled by a case of malaria so powerful, Africans sat on top of him to contain his spasms. Near Kampala, he and another man wrestled a king cobra snake to death. Kapuscinski demonstrates an almost pathological desire to put himself in harms way. When Zanzibar underwent a coup detat, he hired a plane to fly into that beleaguered country, despite warnings that any incoming boats and aircraft were open targets. When the teen-age militia refused to let Kapuscinski leave, he chartered a boat and motored right into a monsoon, nearly drowning. All this risk pays off, however, as Kapuscinski emerges with an evocative and searching portrait of a continent wracked by constant change. As he shows, the independence movements of the early 1960s assumed that throwing off the mantle of colonialism would lead to an era of milk and honey, that corruption would disappear and that barren fields would flourish. Sadly, a series of civil wars further bankrupted the fledgling nations, plunging their swelling populations into famine. Moreover, the 80s and early 90s ushered in the plague of AIDS, ravaging each corner of the already blighted continent. Kapuscinski weaves elegantly between decades, alternating vignettes about the social etiquette of greetings with longer, impressively compressed histories of ongoing conflicts, from the strife in the Sudan to the feudal war waged between the Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda. Stranded with a guide in a small village of starving people, Kapuscinskis companion observed, Because people from Europe spend their time here only in the cities and drive along the major roads, they cannot even imagine what our Africa looks like. Thanks to Kapuscinskis soulful and trenchant reporting, readers will now have a shadow of an idea. John Freeman is a free-lance writer based in New York City.</p>Obituary: Ryszard Kapuścińskihttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/obituary-ryszard-kapuscinski-brittain-guardian/Thu, 25 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/obituary-ryszard-kapuscinski-brittain-guardian/<p>Author: Victoria Brittain<br> Source: The Guardian, January 25, 2007<br> Link: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/jan/25/guardianobituaries.mainsection">https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/jan/25/guardianobituaries.mainsection</a></p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Editorial summary by kapuscinski.info.</strong> The text below is a summary based on the original article. The full article is available free of charge at The Guardian.</p> </blockquote> <hr> <p>An obituary by Victoria Brittain — for many years The Guardian’s correspondent in Africa and Asia, and the author of books on Angola and Equatorial Guinea. Brittain was writing about Africa in much the same years as Kapuscinski, which gives her judgement unusual weight: she is not reviewing him from outside, but from the position of a witness to the same events.</p>The Lies of Ryszard Kapuścińskihttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/the-lies-of-ryszard-kapuscinski-shafer-slate/Thu, 25 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/the-lies-of-ryszard-kapuscinski-shafer-slate/<p>Author: Jack Shafer<br> Source: Slate Magazine, January 25, 2007<br> Link: <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2007/01/the-lies-of-ryszard-kapuscinski.html">https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2007/01/the-lies-of-ryszard-kapuscinski.html</a></p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Editorial summary by kapuscinski.info.</strong> The text below is a summary based on the original article. The full article is available free of charge at Slate.</p> </blockquote> <hr> <p>One of the most contested pieces ever written about Kapuscinski — published in Slate literally the day after his death, which by itself provoked sharp reactions among journalists. Shafer, a well-known media critic, states the charge outright: Kapuscinski was a liar.</p>Ryszard Kapuscinski, Polish Writer of Shimmering Allegories and News, Dies at 74https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/ryszard-kapuscinski-polish-writer-dies-kaufman-nyt/Wed, 24 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/ryszard-kapuscinski-polish-writer-dies-kaufman-nyt/<p>Author: Michael T. Kaufman<br> Source: The New York Times, January 24, 2007<br> Link: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/24/books/24kap.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/24/books/24kap.html</a></p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Editorial summary by kapuscinski.info.</strong> The text below is a summary based on the original article. The full article is available at The New York Times (a subscription may be required).</p> </blockquote> <hr> <p>The obituary of Ryszard Kapuscinski published by The New York Times on the day of the writer’s death, 23 January 2007. Michael T. Kaufman — himself a long-serving NYT foreign correspondent who knew Kapuscinski personally — draws a full portrait for an English-speaking readership.</p>In the Pit of Historyhttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/in-the-pit-of-history-ascherson-nyrb/Thu, 21 Jun 2001 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/in-the-pit-of-history-ascherson-nyrb/<p>Author: Neal Ascherson<br> Source: The New York Review of Books, June 21, 2001<br> Link: <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2001/06/21/in-the-pit-of-history/">https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2001/06/21/in-the-pit-of-history/</a></p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Editorial summary by kapuscinski.info.</strong> 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).</p> </blockquote> <hr> <p>A long review of the English edition of <em>The Shadow of the Sun</em> by Neal Ascherson — the British commentator, expert on Central Europe and historian of Poland. Ascherson sets Kapuscinski’s book against Ann Jones’s <em>Looking for Lovedu</em>, using the pair to show two very different ways of writing about Africa.</p>A Good Man in Africahttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/a-good-man-in-africa-deedes-telegraph/Fri, 15 Jun 2001 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/a-good-man-in-africa-deedes-telegraph/<p>Author: W. F. Deedes<br> Source: The Daily Telegraph (UK), June 15, 2001</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Editorial summary by kapuscinski.info.</strong> The text below is a summary based on the original article. The full article is available in The Daily Telegraph archive.</p> </blockquote> <hr> <p>A review by Bill Deedes — W. F. Deedes, Baron Deedes, one of the legends of British journalism: for decades a reporter and editor at the Daily Telegraph, a Member of Parliament, a minister in Macmillan’s government, a participant in the Abyssinian campaign of 1935, and the likely model for Evelyn Waugh’s William Boot in <em>Scoop</em>.</p>Journeys into the interiorhttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/journeys-into-the-interior/Fri, 01 Jun 2001 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/journeys-into-the-interior/<p><strong>Book reviewed:</strong> <em>The Shadow of the Sun</em> (Polish title: <em>Heban</em>) — Ryszard Kapuściński<br> <strong>Reviewed by:</strong> Geoff Dyer<br> <strong>Date:</strong> Saturday, 2 June 2001<br> <strong>Source:</strong> The Guardian</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Editorial summary by kapuscinski.info.</strong> The text below is a summary based on the original article. The full article is available free of charge at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/jun/02/politics">The Guardian</a>.</p> </blockquote> <hr> <p>If a spacecraft were being sent out to make literary contact with the inhabitants of a distant galaxy and there were room for only one contemporary writer, Dyer would vote for Ryszard Kapuściński. He is the one who has given the truest, most comprehensive and most vivid account of what life on this planet actually looks like.</p>Misguided Tourhttps://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/misguided-tour-hemon-village-voice/Tue, 24 Apr 2001 00:00:00 +0000https://kapuscinski.info/en/press/articles/misguided-tour-hemon-village-voice/<p>Author: Aleksandar Hemon<br> Source: The Village Voice, April 24, 2001</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Editorial summary by kapuscinski.info.</strong> The text below is a summary based on the original article. The full article is available in the Internet Archive (Village Voice).</p> </blockquote> <hr> <p>A review by the Bosnian-American writer Aleksandar Hemon, published on the occasion of the English edition of <em>The Shadow of the Sun</em>. Hemon — himself a writer in two languages, intimately familiar with the experience of being the foreigner — raises objections that would become the groundwork of the later postcolonial debate.</p>