Kirgiz-Schodzi-Z-Konia on kapuscinski.info

"Why Did the World Flash Past Me So Fast" — a review of "Imperium"

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Ryszard Pietrzak. Source: Nowe Książki no. 6, 1993. Published: 1993-01-01

This is a line from a poem by Ryszard Kapuściński, contained in his Notebook. That poem speaks more penetratingly than any of his statements or interviews about the problems bound up with his reportage prose. It is short and worth quoting in full: “Why / did the world / flash past me / so fast / would not let itself be stopped / come closer / be addressed as thou / it rushed off / a vanishing point / in fire and smoke.”

Imperium

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Edition I Year: 1993 Print run: 85,000 copies

Edition II Year: 1994 Print run: 10,000 copies

Edition III Year: 1996 Print run: 8,000 copies

Edition IV Year: 1997 Print run: 7,000 copies

Edition V Year: 1999 Print run: 8,000 copies

Edition VI Year: 2000 Print run: 6,000 copies

Edition VII Year: 2001 Print run: 5,000 copies

Edition VIII Year: 2001 Print run: 3,000 copies

Edition IX Year: 2002 Print run: 5,000 copies

Ryszard Kapuściński on the book "Imperium"

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote Imperium instead of a different book. In the mid-1980s I had an idea to write a trilogy about dictators. The first volume was “The Emperor,” the second “Shah of Shahs,” and the third was meant to be about Amin — an extraordinarily cruel military dictator in Uganda in the 1970s. I had been there many times, gathering material and was preparing to write that book, when in 1985 Perestroika began in the USSR. It was a major world event. Amin was a completely marginal topic compared with what was happening in the East. I could not stay away — I knew I had to go there, see the USSR and try to describe it.