Review
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"This harrowing, at times shattering, chronicle of 40
years of adventures in Africa finds Kapuscinski in trouble again.
. . . He crushes a cobra to save his life, moves with nomads
through Somalia, and waits to die from thirst beneath a truck in
the Sahara. Kapuscinski alternates between plain prose and
shimmering imagery, using understatement to dispel easy
stereotypes about Africa and Africans, and finishing a paragraph
or two of spare exposition with some dazzling revelation or note
of remorse that leaves you reeling. With rare exception, these
distant episodes amaze." -- Brad Wieners, "Outside ""An
astonishing piece of writing . . . as vital a book as any I've
read in recent years, an outstanding introduction to the tangled
threads of African culture and politics and a manual in the modes
of human cruelty and redemption . . . Kapuscinski . . . may be
the greatest journalist of our time. . . . Kapuscinski bears his
historical baggae lightly through the African landscape, but his
inability to tell the story in the dispassionate tones of an
outsider is what gives this visionary book such power." -- Mark
Levine, "Men's Journal "From the U.K.: " ""A dazzling narrative
historian, using his own experience as the principal archive. . .
. he is never less than clear and pungent; his short chapter on
the genocidal hatreds of Rwanda is worth a hundred newspaper
features. . . . He brings the world to us as nobody else." -- Ian
Jack, "The Observer" "Kapuscinski doesn't just 'cover' Africa --
he knows it. His perspective is both vast and uniquely informed."
-- Keith Wilson, "Focus" "His book most successfully conveys the
charms, frustrations, tragedies, comedies, brutalities, and
kindnesses of life in Africa. . . . as an observer, and as a
recorder of his observations, he is second to none." -- Anthony
Daniels, "Sunday Telegraph""His is the first wide-ranging,
elegant, aristocratic intelligence since Conrad's to bear on
Africa in all its perplexity. . . . Kapuscinski is a master of
the charismatic shorthand that leaves the reader knowing all
there is to know, yet wanting to know more." -- Jeremy Harding,"
Evening Standard" "Both subtle and haunting, a book written with
love and longing, as sharp and life-enhancing as the sun that
rises on an African morning." -- Anthony Sattin, "Sunday Times"
"An elliptical picture of African life that is intellectually
acute and emotionally rich." -- Will Cohu," Daily Telegraph" "He
has given the truest, least partial, most comprehensive and vivid
account of what life is like on our planet. He is an unflinching
witness "and" an exuberant stylist." -- Geoff Dyer, "The
Guardian"
Synopsis
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"Only with the greatest of simplifications, for the
sake of convenience, can we say Africa. In reality, except as a
geographical term, Africa doesn't exist". Ryszard Kapuscinski has
been writing about the people of Africa throughout his career. In
a study that avoids the official routes, palaces and big
politics, he sets out to create an account of post-colonial
Africa seen at once as a whole and as a location that wholly
defies generalised explanations. It is both a sustained
meditation on themosaic of peoples and practices we call
'Africa', and an impassioned attempt to come to terms with
humanity itself as it struggles to escape from foreign
domination, from the intoxications of freedom, from war and from
politics as theft.