Travels with Herodotus - Hardcover

Kapuscinski, Ryszard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713998482 ISBN 13: 9780713998481

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2007

Synopsis

Rare Book

About this title

Review:

"Luminous. . . . Like Herodotus, Ryszard Kapuscinski was a reporter, a historian, an adventurer and, truly, an artist." --"The Wall Street Journal""Enchanting. . . . Underneath its shimmering prose beats the unquiet heart of a fundamentally decent man and an uncommonly gifted observer. . . . It has a startling clarity and power." --"The New Republic""A work of art: so eloquent, so simple, that you find yourself marveling at its prose....a travel book that all students of writing and of literature ought to read." --"The Washington Post Book World"

Synopsis:

As a novice reporter in the 1950's, the young Ryzsard Kapuscinski wanted nothing more than to travel outside the borders of Poland. One day, without warning, his editor called him into her office and told him he was being sent to India. 'At the end of our conversation, during which I learned that I would indeed be going forth into the world, Tarlowska reached into a cabinet, took out a book, and handing it to me said 'Here, a present for the road'. It was a thick book with a stiff cover of yellow cloth. On the front, stamped in gold letters, was "Herodotus' The Histories"'. "Travels with Herodotus" records how Kapuscinski set out on his first forays - to India, China and Africa - with the great Greek historian constantly in his pocket. He sees Louis Armstrong in Khartoum, visits Dar-es-Salaam, arrives in Algiers in time for a coup when nothing seems to happen (but he sees the Mediterranean for the first time).At every encounter with a new culture, Kapuscinski plunges in, curious and observant, thirsting to understand its history, its thought, its people.

And he reads Herodotus so much that he often feels he is embarking on two journeys - the first his assignment as a reporter, the second following Herodotus' expeditions. Woven into his accounts of his travels are his retellings of Herodotus' epic stories. His whole life as a reporter is a dialogue with what he calls 'world literature's first great work of reportage'. What kind of restless, enquiring traveller was its author? he asks. 'Man is by nature a sedentary creature, settled down happily, naturally, on his particular patch of earth ...But to traverse the world for years in order to get to know it, to plumb it, to understand it? And then, later, to put all his findings into words? Such people have always been uncommon'.How right, and how satisfying, that those words should be among the last written by Ryszard Kapuscinski, the greatest traveller-reporter of our time.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0713998482
• ISBN 13: 9780713998481
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288