"Reports from African Wanderings" — Review of "If the Whole of Africa"

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Jerzy Prokopczuk. Source: Nowe Książki, no. 10. Date of publication: 31 May 1969.

In the preface to the book the author wrote: “The reportages collected in this book constitute accounts of my African wanderings. In Africa I was not looking for adventure, I did not hunt elephants, I did not dig for diamonds. I was a correspondent of the Polish Press Agency and I had to write about what I heard or saw there, about what was happening there. And much was happening. I spent nearly six years in Africa in its most turbulent and restless period — full, moreover, of hopes, though sometimes overly easy ones. It was a turning point between two epochs: colonialism was ending, independence was beginning. That change of reality, that upheaval, that revolution — I tried to describe it. That is how the reportages came into being. I did not write them with a book in mind. Not even with publication in mind. In the years when I was making these notes, a number of the views they contain belonged to the highly controversial, not to say heretical. But I cared about one thing: to write how it really was — for that is, after all, the ambition, the ambition of the reportorial brotherhood.”

Jerzy-Prokopczuk on kapuscinski.info

"Reports from African Wanderings" — Review of "If the Whole of Africa"