The Shadow of the Sun (Vintage International) - Softcover

Kapuscinski, Ryszard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679779078 ISBN 13: 9780679779070

Publisher: Vintage, 2002

Synopsis

In 1957, Ryszard Kapuscinski arrived in Africa to witness the beginning of the end of colonial rule as the first African correspondent of Poland's state newspaper. From the early days of independence in Ghana to the ongoing ethnic genocide in Rwanda, Kapuscinski has crisscrossed vast distances pursuing the swift, and often violent, events that followed liberation. Kapuscinski hitchhikes with caravans, wanders the Sahara with nomads, and lives in the poverty-stricken slums of Nigeria. He wrestles a king cobra to the death and suffers through a bout of malaria. What emerges is an extraordinary depiction of Africa--not as a group of nations or geographic locations--but as a vibrant and frequently joyous montage of peoples, cultures, and encounters. Kapuscinski's trenchant observations, wry analysis and overwhelming humanity paint a remarkable portrait of the continent and its people. His unorthodox approach and profound respect for the people he meets challenge conventional understandings of the modern problems faced by Africa at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

About this title

Review:

Polish writer and foreign correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski may be in the twilight of a golden career spanning more than 40 years but The Shadow of the Sun, an alternative record of his experiences of Africa and its stupefying white heat, is perhaps his finest hour. This for a writer who, to echo the sentiments of Michael Ignatieff, has turned reportage into literature. Drawn to the Developing World through an impoverished wartime upbringing, Kapuscinski arrived in Ghana in 1957 and was on hand to witness the tumultuous years in which colonial Africa was dismantled, resulting in born-again countries ripe for ransacking by despots. From the glare of Accra airport which greets him on first arrival, to the Tanzanian night of the final pages, he crosses savannah, desert and city by foot, road and train, searching out the two most important, yet inconstant commodities on the continent: shade and water. Threatened by an Egyptian cobra, cursed with cerebral malaria and tuberculosis, plagued by black cockroaches the size of small turtles, Kapuscinski intermingles the immediate and the reflective in 29 satisfyingly fragmented vignettes, encompassing historical narratives and personal experience across a host of countries, including Ethiopia, Uganda, Nigeria, Sudan and Liberia.

While acknowledging European colonial culpability, he refuses to rinse his words in guilt. The Shadow of the Sun is reminiscent of Gianni Celati's Adventures in Africa, employing similarly symphonic atmospherics that can bear poetic witness to both the tragic history of Rwanda and the Ngubi beetle, which toils in the desert to produce the sweat it drinks to survive. As much about the plastic water container as the warlord and preferring the African shanty town to the Manhattan skyscraper as a monument to human achievement, what Kapuscinski, the author of Shah of Shahs describes is not Africa, which he claims does not exist except geographically but a distillation of life itself, through its religiosity, its trees, the frightening abundance of youth, sun that "curdles the blood" and terrorising, ruling armies that fall in a day. The first in a projected trilogy pulling together Africa, Central America and Asia, The Shadow of the Sun is an exceptional and humbling work of imagination and experience by a writer intent on liberating truths from fact. --David Vincent

Review:

"A highly detailed, heartfelt, but unsentimental introduction to Africa's afflictions and a quiet love song to its profound appeal." --The Wall Street Journal, Ryszard Kapuscinski (Author of The Emperor)

"The penetrating intelligence of Mr. Kapuscinski's vision and his knack for a kind of crystallized descriptive writing have never been on better display. . . . A marvel of humane, sorrowful and lucid observation." --The New York Times

"[Kapuscinski] has explored that sliver of high, thinly populated ground on which journalism and literature are occasionally joined. . . . A wise, engaging close-up filled with faces, landscapes, rutted roads, and the daily perils of African life." --BusinessWeek

"[Kapuscinski's] great strengths are his style--candid, understated and slightly absurdist, veering into abrupt flights of lyricism on unexpected subjects--and his gift for picking out stories, that condense volumes of information into a single perfectly crafted passage." --The Washington Post

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0679779078
• ISBN 13: 9780679779070
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336