Ryszard Kapuściński - note to self, look this guy up
Ryszard Kapuściński (born March 4, 1932 in Pińsk) is the most popular Polish journalist, both at home and abroad.
Born in Pińsk, a city that was formerly located in the Kresy Wschodnie (Eastern Borderlands) of the Second Polish Republic and now belongs to Belarus, Kapuściński is generally thought of as Poland's leading journalist. In 1964, after honing his skills on domestic stories, he "was appointed by the Polish Press Agency as its only foreign correspondent, and for the next ten years he was 'responsible' for fifty countries." [1] Throughout this period, Kapuściński traveled around the developing world and reported on wars, coups and revolutions in the Americas, Asia and Europe. When he finally returned to Poland, he had lived through twenty-seven revolutions and coups. In the English speaking world, Kapuściński is best known for his reporting from Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, when he witnessed first-hand the continent's liberation from colonialism.
Starting in the early 1960s, Kapuściński has published books of increasing literary craftsmanship characterized by sophisticated narrative technique, psychological portraits of characters, a wealth of stylization and metaphor and unusual imagery that serves as means of interpreting the perceived world. Kapuściński's best-known book, The Emperor, concerns itself with the decline of Haile Selassie's anachronistic regime in Ethiopia. Shah of Shahs, on the fall of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, and Imperium, about the last days of the Soviet Union, have enjoyed similar success.
Kapuściński is fascinated not only by exotic worlds and people, but also by books: he approaches foreign countries first through literature, spending months reading before each trip. He knows how to listen to the people he meets, but he is also capable of "reading" the hidden sense of the scenes he encounters: the way that the Europeans move out of Angola, a discussion regarding alimony in the Tanganyikan parliament, the reconstruction of frescoes in the new Russia - he turns each of these vignettes into a metaphor of historical transformation. This tendency to process private adventures into a greater social synthesis has made Kapuściński an eminent thinker, and the volumes of his ongoing Lapidarium series are a fascinating record of the shaping of a reporter's observations into philosophical reflections on the world and people.
Born in Pińsk, a city that was formerly located in the Kresy Wschodnie (Eastern Borderlands) of the Second Polish Republic and now belongs to Belarus, Kapuściński is generally thought of as Poland's leading journalist. In 1964, after honing his skills on domestic stories, he "was appointed by the Polish Press Agency as its only foreign correspondent, and for the next ten years he was 'responsible' for fifty countries." [1] Throughout this period, Kapuściński traveled around the developing world and reported on wars, coups and revolutions in the Americas, Asia and Europe. When he finally returned to Poland, he had lived through twenty-seven revolutions and coups. In the English speaking world, Kapuściński is best known for his reporting from Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, when he witnessed first-hand the continent's liberation from colonialism.
Starting in the early 1960s, Kapuściński has published books of increasing literary craftsmanship characterized by sophisticated narrative technique, psychological portraits of characters, a wealth of stylization and metaphor and unusual imagery that serves as means of interpreting the perceived world. Kapuściński's best-known book, The Emperor, concerns itself with the decline of Haile Selassie's anachronistic regime in Ethiopia. Shah of Shahs, on the fall of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, and Imperium, about the last days of the Soviet Union, have enjoyed similar success.
Kapuściński is fascinated not only by exotic worlds and people, but also by books: he approaches foreign countries first through literature, spending months reading before each trip. He knows how to listen to the people he meets, but he is also capable of "reading" the hidden sense of the scenes he encounters: the way that the Europeans move out of Angola, a discussion regarding alimony in the Tanganyikan parliament, the reconstruction of frescoes in the new Russia - he turns each of these vignettes into a metaphor of historical transformation. This tendency to process private adventures into a greater social synthesis has made Kapuściński an eminent thinker, and the volumes of his ongoing Lapidarium series are a fascinating record of the shaping of a reporter's observations into philosophical reflections on the world and people.
posted by Westy at 8:33 AM
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