Ryszard Kapuscinski sits under the branchy shade of a solitary acacia and stares at the incommensurable moonlike landscape unfolding in front of him. Plains covered with parched, thorny shrubs and vast extensions of sandy ground seem ablaze in a shimmering haze that refracts on the journalist’s eyes forcing him to squint. “Water and shade, such fluid, inconstant things, and the two most valuable treasures in Africa”, this half-historian, half-journalist recalls while revisiting the thirty years

“The population of Africa was a gigantic, matted, crisscrossing web, spanning the entire continent and in constant motion, endlessly undulating, bunching up in one place and spreading out in another, a rich fabric, a colourful arras.” - Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Shadow of the SunA man I’d unfortunately never heard of wrote one of the most engaging historical reflections I've’ve ever read. Ryszard Kapuscinski reported on African events for a Polish newspaper for over 40 years. He was definitely in...

Goodreads changed my experience with this book. For much of the time I was reading it, I was mesmerized by the writing, flabbergasted by some of the information about Africa, and convinced I was encountering the continent in a nuanced and subtle and authentic manner. I planned to give a copy to my husband for his birthday and to recommend it to my book group. Curious about what other readers thought, I looked at some of the almost 500 reviews of it on goodreads, and it was there that I came acro...

This is insightful prose written by a Polish journalist who spent years traveling around Africa (beginning in the 1950s). It is a collection of essays that follow Kapuscinski's time spent in Africa; during coups, wars, racial tensions, hunger, starvation, sickness, and more. Though I didn't love the parts of the book that seemed highly dramatized, what I really liked about this is that Kapuscinski gets into the experience, living it and detailing it. He's not a removed journalist. In fact, this

I have only read a few book by Kapuscinski, one of which was a Penguin Great Journeys book The Cobra's Heart, which is an excerpt from this book. I gave that five stars, and reading that book convinced me to buy more of this authors work, including this book, which I have finally made time for from my shelf.This is probably Kapuscinski's best known book, and is his highest rated book on GR. Not without reason. This is 5 stars for me, and this was confirmed by about a third of the way through.Thi...

It's interesting to see how few of my GR connections have read this author.My adult kids and I stumbled on "The Shadow of the Sun" in the famous City Lights bookstore in North Beach, SF. We all read this book and we were hooked. What a find. I just introduced the author to my soon to be son-in-law. He works for USAID and is going to read this book before traveling to West Africa. The last book I read by the author was Shah of Shahs. I had a friend at the gym, Ali, who was born in Tehran. He beca...

A book like this would normally I would have imagined taken me very little time to read because I would devour it in a binge of gulpings and swallowings but it took me a good deal longer. In part, for the simple reason that I was taken up with other things and couldn't find the freedom to absorb myself in his world as I would have liked but also for the equally simple but at the same time profound reason that there was just too much to take in.I listed it as epistolary and though it is not offic...

Kapuściński was a Polish journalist who died in 2007, and who spent time in Africa between the late 1950ies and the 1990ies. Africa was not his only beat, but when he spent time there he spent time with the people and shared their lives when he could. He was the first Polish foreign correspondent to cover Africa and he was always seriously underfunded compared with those representing the big European and American publications and agencies. What he lacked in funds he made up in ingenuity and a wi...

“Dawn and dusk—these are the most pleasant hours in Africa. The sun is either not yet scorching, or it is no longer so—it lets you be, lets you live.”The Polish Kapuściński was a foreign correspondent in Africa for 40 years and lent his name to an international prize for literary reportage. This collection of essays spans decades and lots of countries, yet feels like a cohesive narrative. The author sees many places right on the cusp of independence or in the midst of coup d’états. Living among

Kapuściński first went to Africa in 1957 and, over the next forty years, returned whenever he could. He says ‘I travelled extensively, avoiding official routes, palaces, important personages, and high-level politics. Instead, I opted to hitch rides on passing trucks, wander with nomads through the desert, be the guest of peasants of the tropical savannah. Their life is endless toil, a torment they endure with astonishing patience and good humor.‘This is therefore not a book about Africa, but rat...

The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski is many thing, too many things in fact & rendered over far too great a period of time to be completely coherent, though much of the writing, especially the pieces written about Africa later in the author's career, are quite compelling.Beginning in Ghana in 1958 with a declaration that "the whites in Africa are a sort of outlandish & unseemly intruder" and the hope that Kwame Nkrumah will be an African savior, I sensed that Kapuscinski had been lifted

Last fall I read Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski, the Polish journalist. It was his final book (he died in January, 2007) and I enjoyed it very much, having recently read Herodotus' Histories upon which he draws extensively. So it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to reading earlier works by Ryszard Kapuscinski. As an introduction to the mosaic of life that is known as "Africa" The Shadow of the Sun did not disappoint. The book consists of loosely connected essays o...

Shifting seamlessly from vignettes of daily life to grand excursions into Africa's turbulent political past, Kapuscinski zig-zags across vast expanses of scorching desert and lush greenery in this masterful piece of journalistic travel writing. He describes people, politics and landscape with equal ease. The lioness stalking in the tall grasses is as riveting as the utterly fascinating character study of Idi Amin.The first chapter was studded with generalisations about Africa and Africans that m...

Ryszard Kapuscinski was the foreign correspondent par excellence, someone who could simultaneously travel rough, report the story, appreciate and approach the local people on their own terms, and weave his experiences into a narrative of uncommon breadth and intelligence. And it's even more impressive when you realize he's covering Africa for the presumably shoestring Polish communist press. Books like these up the ante for book-length journalism, and show what an absolute shit job the puppets e...

The book reads as a collection of snapshots and stories from some of African subsaharan countries after the formal independance. It’s quite educational and provides an overview of the historical and social context of the time. I appreciate how Kapuscinski smoothly shifts from vignettes of daily life, food, fauna and flora to elaborate naratives of Africa’s turbulent political past, while neither judging nor idealizing the societies. However, there’s something disturbing about reading on Africa f...

“The spirit of Africa always appears in the guise of an elephant. Because no other animal can vanquish an elephant. Not a lion, not a buffalo, not a snake.”This book was excellent. The author chronicled his years as a journalist in Africa with deep understanding, historical relevance, and an immersive commitment to learning. This was the first book that I have read chronicling the history of Africa that provided both context and sociology within personal anecdotes, making the wealth of informati...

"This is therefore not a book about Africa, but rather about some people from there (...) The continent is too large to describe. (...) Only with the greatest simplification, for the sake of convenience, can we say "Africa". In reality, except as geographical appellation, Africa does not exist."So the foreword reads, and I was eager for an account that is described by Sunday Times as having been "written with love and longing, as sharp and life enhancing as the sun that rises on an African morni...

This book came as a revelation to me! It enlightened me about the history, spirit and psyche of Africa (a meaningless appellation), and made me acutely aware of my smug ignorance about this vast, endlessly diverse continent. Kapuscinski, who’s covered dozens of coups and revolutions as a conflict reporter in the era of decolonization, writes about the continent and its people with empathy, never exoticizing it. I would go as far as to say that The Shadow of the Sun is probably the best work of t...

"The Shadow of the Sun", a set of stories by Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish journalist who travelled and lived in Africa numerous times between the 50s and the 90s, has definitely taught me humbleness and almost painfully exposed my ignorance of Africa. After finishing the book I read that Kapuscinski had lived through 27 coups and revolutions, had been jailed 40 times and had survived 4 death sentences, however in this book you will not find a single hint of pride or a boasting word about his en...

The book offers an introduction to the underlying politics of a vast continent that was constantly in turmoil in the post colonial period with a confused hierarchy, a mass famine and endless war. However, Kapuściński does a brilliant job in maintaining a balance in his writing speckled with his own introspection, the facts and the reality of people surviving against all the odds with their belief systems aimed to carry on an ancestral legacy. Kapuściński not only visits the well known cities and...

This is the rather more well-known work of Kapuscinski. For me, however, the charm seems to fade. Suddenly I'm disenchanted. Well, on the bright side, I've read his better books. Or else, I could have missed "Another day of life" or "Imperium."It appears to me that Kapuscinski's later works touches too close the border of fact and fiction. There is this romanticism, this exaggeration that seems beautiful and effective at first in seducing readers but then just becomes so blatant that it pushes m...

(More of a note than a real review)As always with Kapuscinski's books, the writing is fantastic, and the narrative gripping. But something didn't seem right about it to me, for books purporting to be factual accounts... My belief was being increasingly suspended and I was suspicious.. I increasingly felt like this must be the work of a fantasist, or a hybrid at least: a hybrid of fantasy and travelogue. I did a little research and very quickly it turned out that other people suspect the same. A

This book takes you on an a whirlwind tour of Africa over the span of many years, many countries, and many different types of situations. The essays span the continent and quickly zoom the reader in and then back out of small incidents, large coups, nomadic wanderings, war lords, and everything (and everyone) in between. I've never been able to get my mind around Africa. Its complexity both geographically and politically make it difficult to understand and internalize. In one respect the book do...

Africa and Kapuscinski. Kapuscinski's Africa.Burning hot continent, swept by waves of revolution, war, man slaughter but also of unbearable beauty. A place of utmost complex diversity there's no generalization can capture it. Honestly, Africa had been outside my radar before reading this. But the gift and curse of Kapuscinski's writing is that it drew me in, dragged me to the unknown and made me pause to think. My world is getting larger, vaster and richer. I am a bit relieved that he had writte...

I found this book boring. It is travel writing but nothing really happens. Mundane details are written about in great detail.

”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 Kapuściński crossed the African continent (and pretty much the rest of the world as well) several times. By living like a local, eating like a local, and getting malaria as a local, he got a unique perspective of everyday life.The book consists of a number of articles set in different African countries at different time periods, fro...

A fantastic introduction to this mysterious continent. The experiences of over 40 years travelling in and reporting from Africa are beautifully condensed in this small book. Here is a long quote:"The European and the African have an entirely different concept of time. In the European worldview, time exists outside man, exists objectively, and has measurable and linear characteristics. According to Newton, time is absolute: “Absolute, true, mathematical time of itself and from its own nature, it

Rereading the book that started my adoration for Kapuściński's writing style back in 2018 could have gone either way. There's always uncertainty about how you'll react to something you treasure with a set of new eyes and experiences, but I am happy to report that what he's given us in The Shadow of the Sun remains as potent and powerful and pulsating as before.Ryszard picks and chooses from his massive tome of 40 years of reporting in Africa, a continent he's witnessed undergo the unshackling of...

Opening - More than anything, one is struck by the light.Page 122 - In the desert, the first thing man sees when he opens his eyes in the morning is the face of his enemy - the flaming visage of the sun.Page 125 - The water, disgusting Saharan water - warm, dirty, thick with sand and sludge - extended my life but took away my vision of paradise.Page 199 - For years now the regime in Khartoum has availed itself of the weapon of hunger to defeat the South's inhabitants. It is doing today with the

Mr. K is the sort of intrepid traveler we're used to reading about in tales of an earlier generation, the Burtons, Humboldts and Spekes of the world. He marks his year by the number of coups he witnesses and the number of death sentences rendered against him. In Shadow of the Sun, a collection of dispatches from around Africa, he manages to relate, in language worthy of Conrad and Maugham, both the beauty and the horror of Africa. It's a stunning, enlightening and occasinally frightening smorgas...