Product Description

'This is a very personal book, about being alone and lost'. In 1975 Kapuscinski's employers sent him to Angola to cover the civil war that had broken out after independence. For months he watched as Luanda and then the rest of the country collapsed into a civil war that was in the author's words 'sloppy, dogged and cruel'. In his account, Kapuscinski demonstrates an extraordinary capacity to describe and to explain the individual meaning of grand political abstractions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38770 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-07
• Original language: Polish
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

About the Author
Ryszard Kapuscinski was a renowned journalist and writer whose previous books include The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat (which Salman Rushdie called 'an unforgettable, fiercely comic, and finally compassionate book'), The Shadow of the Sun, Shah of Shahs, Imperium and The Soccer War. Allen Lane also publish his last book Travels With Herodotus. He died in January 2007.

Customer Reviews

A vivid description of descent into war in Angola
Kapuscinski's reportage is uniquely engaging, often showing close similarity in style to the 'magical realism' (forgive the term!) of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In this, perhaps his best book and probably my favourite work of reportage, he describes life as a Polish foreign correspondent caught up in the last days of the Portuguese empire, in Angola in 1975. He describes the changes taking place as the Portuguese leave and Angola descends into the hell of civil war. He is not afraid (or is afraid, but still does it!) to risk his skin, travelling as a sole outside witness in hair-raising circumstances to report to the world. Kapuscinski shows a close bond to the people that he writes of - one of his great strengths - and a strong sense of humour. If you are interested in 20th century African history, and want more that a dry text, this is one of several books to read by Kapuscinski! There is no equivalent.

Angola's descent into a nightmare.
This was the first book of Kapuscinski's I ever read(in about 1986)and I've been a huge fan ever since.Not the archetypal war junkie that western media outlets habitually send to Africa,Kapuscinski's humanity and gift for the arresting detail shine out in this book.Two highlights in a fantastic book are:
1-The passage describing roadblock etiquette.How vital it is to know the difference between "camarada"(comrade) and "irmao"(brother).Saying the wrong word at the wrong roadblock means instant death.
2-When he hears a radio broadcast saying that the MPLA are a bunch of communist stooges,lackeys to their Soviet masters,and that any communists would be hunted down.At this point in time,Kapuscinski is,as far as he knows,the only citizen of a socialist country anywhere in Angola.a terrifying moment which he puts across very well.
If only Kapuscinski knew that the war between the MPLA and it's enemies would go on for almost another 30 years.Fantastic journalism,and a good primer on the roots of Angola's post-independence nightmare.

A good reportage or a good propaganda?
I was reading the first part of the book and admiring the `reportage' and excellent 'journalism' of the writer. I met many Portuguese guys that left and came back to Angola when the war ended and I was still looking for the why, what made people leave everything they've toiled for, their farms, houses, churches, animals, the icon of the family's saint above the door frame. Kapuscinski tell their story nicely, his story make sense.

But then he leaves Luanda and travel to the fronts and my affair with him ends there.
I live in and out of Angola for over 7 years now, I've been there when the war ended, I worked with war veterans from both sides. I have good MPLA friends and good UNITA friends. I met South-African that were here, fighting, and Portuguese farmers that never left. I traveled the country by length. I know the places that Kapuscinski visited. I know them well.

Kapuscinski does what I thought a good foreign journalist in a new place must not do- take a side. How can you tell a story when your political views are so one sided (and in 1975 Kapuscinski came from a Communist, not a Socialist country and the war in Angola was, when the book was published in 1976, an important icon of the cold war- a case study for `war by proxy').

When one can see only the mixed race elite of Luanda as the legitimate owners of that land yet one choose to ignore the views of everyone else, as educated but yet fully African.

Most of the friends Kapuscinski make are white or mixed race Angolan. Some of them Portuguese adventurers, but they chose a communist flag so they represent the brave young republic and for them Kapuscinski will cross journalist lines and will pass information that might help stop the `others' to whom he does not speak, which he does not even meet. The others must be puppets of foreign masters and their white soldiers all mercenaries.

The Cuban where the one really to turn the tide, 25,000 of them will be a much more accurate number then what the book says. It wasn't just their uniforms that made UNITA run as Kapuscinski suggests, it was also their MIG airplanes and their heavy tanks and the mountains of Russian AK 47's that they brought with them.
This book tells an interesting story and it tells it nicely. The story was told in a political context, not just a journalist context. There are so little stories about that period of time so this little different in context is Important.

The product summery quotes from the book: "It's wrong to write about people without living through at least a little of what they are living through', I agree, a fair rule. I only wish Kapuscinski would have kept it beyond his immediate political views.