The Shadow of the Sun

Ryszard Kapuscinski has been writing about Africa since the very first days when the countries became independent from their colonial masters, and he starts in Ghana in 1958. I have been a serious "fan" of his works for a number of years, having read "The Emperor," (about the last days of Haile Selassie in Ethiopia), "Shah of Shahs" (on Iran), "The Soccer Wars" (Latin America) and "Another Day of Life," (on the last days of Portuguese rule in Angola, in 1975.) Ebene is a "summing up" of his career, a collection of vignettes written in 1998, translated from Polish into French, and published, with this edition, in the year 2000. He was to die in 2007. This work reflects his time in Africa, south of the Sahara, commonly called Black Africa, and hence the title. In 2002 this book was translated into English, and published as "Shadow of the Sun." He is famous for having made virtue out of a necessity. Working for the Polish News Agency, he did not have the lavish expense accounts to stay in the 5-star hotels of the capitals, and thus had to live closer to "the people." This necessity, plus the fact that he was not from a colonizing power assumingly permitted him to obtain a more authentic view of the continent. And he trumpets the fact: "Perhaps because I am annoyed by the people who arrive here, and live in the `Little Europe' or the `Little America' (that is to say the luxury hotels) and depart, bragging immediately about having been in Africa when in reality they have seen nothing of the continent." One vignette, entitled "Me, the White," relates his experience in Tanzania, in 1962, as the English departed, and the Black natives immediately assumed their positions. Later, he visits Zanzibar, which would be incorporated with Tanganyika to form the union of Tanzania. One of the last stories concerns Lenshina, a religious leader in Zambia, who played an old gramophone record of Churchill's war speeches, which was so worn that she was able to claim the scratching sounds were the word of God. Kapuscinski goes on to say that Kenneth Kaunda, then the President of Zambia, sent tanks against Lenshina's refuge, killing hundreds. The author also went to Timbuktu, and found the plaque indicating the house where the famous explorer, Heinrich Barth stayed. In Liberia, he pondered the attempts to set up a free state of former slaves, and concluded that the mentality could not be changed. Of the utmost personal interest was his visit to Lalibela, in 1975. This is where functioning churches are carved into solid rock. He said that Mengistu, the man who overthrew Selassie, was united with him in the lie which hide the massacre of a million Ethiopians. My wife and I were on a scheduled tour to arrive in Lalibela in 1984, but it was cancelled due to the town's seizure by the Tigre People's Liberation Front. It was disheartening to read, particularly in an article in "Slate," that Kapuscinski also engaged in the "magic realism" technique, getting at the truth of t

An interesting concept by Penguin entitled "Great Journeys" ranging from Ancient Times via the Age of Discovery to 19th and 20th century adventurers which in a short set of extracts from the longer original work, follows the current trend of "quick reads" whereby authors efectively get "sampled" inhelping the reader test if they are willing to follow up and buy the longer original. While older readers may baulk at this approach it will be interesting to see what response it creates. This particular example from the great Polish travel writer on the Third World, Ryszard Kapuscinski probably works so well because all his books are effectively a series of mini essays with each chapter's topic and country continuously changing even where they have a general theme. This choice from the longer "The Shadow of the Sun" (which I must admit is not my personal favourite of all his works) is a series of essays over the years on his visits to Africa that range from Ghana the first African colony to win independence in the 1950s through to an encounter with black magic in Western Uganda post Idi Amin taking power. Kapuscinski's main attraction as a writer is that he has always sought out the underclass and the underbelly of the locations he has visited as well as mixing with the leaders of the chosen location plus brings a practical political analysis to the issues, especially bearing in mind he was visiting as a journalist from a Communist country. A very easy read and introduction which will hopefully make any new readers want to go and read his now many longer tomes on subjects ranging from the fall of the Shah in Iran to post Cold War Russia.

I bought this book in Johannesburg Airport, waiting for a plane to Madagascar. After turning the first page I became entranced and could barely stop reading until both the book and the plane ride had ended. "Shadow of the Sun" consists of a series of short tales, vignettes really. Each tale provides an insight into the vagaries of human behavior, the punishing impact of a fierce climate, and the lives of people whose only goal is to live until another sun rises. The brief descriptions are poignant and compelling, the prose beautifully translated, and the stories heartwrenching. It's one of those books that make you want to give copies to everyone you know. Most readers will never have experienced the kind of desperate inventiveness that characterize very poor countries. Barefoot children beg for money and food and live by their wits on the streets. Families in rural areas make do with mud huts and no electricity or potable water; they forage for wood and grass for cooking. And so forth. Kapuscinski shows us all of that and more, but adds a spirit of joy and hope.

To say that this is the best book on Africa that I have ever read would not amount to much of a recommendation, since I have not read much on the subject. However, I can honestly say that it is one of the 10 best books that I have ever read, period! Kapuscinski might know more about Africa than any other non-African writer in the world, since he has spent many years there and been to seemingly every country on the continent. This book contains two dozen or so essays, each about 10 pages long and dealing with one of Kapuscinski's adventures. There are dispatches from everywhere: Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Mali, Mauritania, Cameroon, Liberia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Somalia, Zanzibar, and probably a few more countries that escape my memory. There is something here for everybody. If you are looking for penetrating analyses of current affairs, there is a great chapter on Idi Amin, a chapter on the social origins of the Rwandan genocide, an insider's account of one of Nigeria's many military coups, and many others. One of my favorite chapters was about the Liberian civil war. In a particularly telling scene, two men approach Kapuscinski in the airport just after he has arrived. "We will protect you," one of them says without emotion. "Without us, you will perish." One of Kapuscinski's great strenghts is his ability to convey everyday life in the places he is reporting from, and especially the ways in which that life is disrupted by wars, famines, military takeovers, etc. His dispatches from Liberia, southern Sudan, and Ethiopia are particularly moving. Some of my favorite stories, however, come from Kapuscinski's visits to ordinary African villages far from any cities or major highways. He has an uncanny ability to describe the tenor of life in these places. He describes a typical day in a tiny village near border between Senegal and Mauritania. After beginning the morning by praying towards Mecca, each villager visits every other villager, inquiring about their health, how well they slept the night before, and other trivial matters. It is little scenes like this that I love about Kapuscinski's books. There are hundreds of foreign correspondents out there that have written some great work from the most far flung corners of the globe, but none of them can match Kapuscinski's ability to describe the mundane with such insight, compassion, and humanity. There are some things I take issue with in the book. For instance, Kapuscinski often comes off as a cultural determinist, explaining a country's social and economic underdevelopment by pointing to cultural and religious influences. These are undoubtedly important factors, but Kapuscinski often seems resigned to the fact that such practices and values are immutable. Also, there are relatively few women in this book. This is undoubtedly partly to do with the fact that he is writing about very patriarchical societies, where women have less of a role in public life, but it still would have been nice i

"Oh, no," you may be thinking, "another 'I Found Africa...' book" by a white journalist who's poked around a bit, extruded the steamy and the exotic, romanticized this, excoriated that, along the way raised a few primoridial terrors to jolt his well-meaning liberal readers, and all in all, told a few ripping yarns. This man is different, beginning with his more than forty year relationship with the African continent. Great writers like Kapucinski--and he IS a very great writer, assisted by a great translator, Klara Glowczewska--teach us how to see, how to find the right context, how to set out the proper perspective. Most of those who read this book will be Westerners in search of a window. As an introduction, as an intimation of the myriads of Africas--because, as Kapucinski freely acknowledges, it's unfair, and somewhat insulting, to speak simply of "Africa"--and, yes, as an interpretation for Western minds, readers could do no better than The Shadow of the Sun. For all his his vivid prose and artistic control of story elements, Kapucinski is a scholarly observer, a man who sees through the deep ice, seemingly an anthropologist refitted as a journalist--his eye is uncanny, his descriptive powers precise and powerful, and his range of experiences and depth of understanding makes this a uniquely valuable tutorial. He writes with clarity and fresh insight on familiar topics like Amin, Sudan, and the Rwanda genocide--his "lecture" on the events of 1994 is one of the book's many highpoints--but also on the sensations, struggles, and states of being that accompany the simple act of living in so challenging an array of environments as Africa's geography provides. Yes, Kapucinski does include exotica, but without sensationalizing: there are harrowing encounters with flora, fauna, disease, the elements and, again and again, the terrible heat (which he finds as many ways of describing as the proverbial Inuit has of describing snow). But Kapucinski always returns to human dimensions and conditions and, above all, to the patterns and rhythms and variations of human exchange around which life in the many Africas organizes itself. And, always, he seeks to convey and to understand the point of view of his many interlocutors, rather than to make facile attributions or easy generalizations. This is superb reportage and an essential document by a true master. It is to me staggering that, published by the same house as Robert Kaplan (of The Coming Anarchy fame) and sensitively covering the very turf that so alarmed Kaplan, Kapucinski remains comparatively unknown. Fix that.