The Soccer War

It's almost impossible to process the news with the same perspective after reading this book...what was true in the 60s still rings true today. I picked up this book while simultaneously reading articles in Esquire and The New Yorker about people (Bill Gates, Bill Clinton...) trying to make a difference in Africa. While I was made hopeful by the observations in today's mainstream press, I grew increasingly frustrated when confronted with the dark reality that Kapuscinski exposes.

As somebody who once lived in Honduras before the infamous soccer war of 1969, I long had Kapuscinski's book on my "must read" list. Though I bought it five years ago, I didn't get around to reading it till just now. I'm glad I did. THE SOCCER WAR is another sterling volume from this master of description. THE SOCCER WAR isn't a book about the absurd war between El Salvador and Honduras, triggered by World Cup qualification matches, but really caused by El Salvador's overpopulation and the subsequent overflow of Salvadorenos into much-emptier Honduras. The war may also be ascribed to the fact that neither country has been able to tame its landowning classes, who continue to this day to run rampant over the poor masses of people. In any case, this war, which happened decades ago, occupies only 30 pages of a 234 page book. The rest of the book contains vignettes from Ghana, Nigeria, Congo, Burundi, Algeria, Tanganyika, Syria, Cyprus, and Ethiopia. I think another title would have given readers a better idea of what the book is about. Anyway, I would not say this book is about particular societies or countries, rather it is about the human condition. Kapuscinski, if you have read any of his other (excellent) work, specializes in inserting himself into extreme situations----war, rebellion, conflict, and abnormal behavior. Where the strictures of daily life have fallen down, we find him reporting, usually at considerable risk to his person. He is nearly burned to death in Nigeria, nearly executed in Burundi, nearly lynched in the Congo, nearly blown up in Honduras. In every case, he manages to portray some participants as humane and decent, or as simple people caught up in events beyond their control. He never writes off groups of people as `wild' or `barbarous', but manages to `read' them even as he faces almost certain death. The absurdity of all this violence, the violence that never ends on this planet, comes through loud and clear. Ryszard, you wrote your best, but nobody in charge listened. Readers of the book, however, will come away with a better understanding of human nature and its universal similarity on every continent, among every race and religion. From the stupidity, waste, and blood, we can learn. We just don't.

R.Kapuscinski has spend many years of his life travelling and trying to understand the reality and the way of thinking of the third world countries . The Soccer War is exactly about that , with it's biggest part reffering to Africa and it's final fifty-sixty pages dedicated to Central America . Kapuscinski succeeds his aims on many levels . He manages both to analyze the political situation on places like Nigeria and Ghana , to focus on the motivations and strategy of the people who hold power there and at the same time he richly describes the landscapes , the scarried faces and the towns and neighbourhoods he had seen . What he seems to try to explain is this : despite the fact that there are many gifted politicians in these nations willing to make a difference , the lack of diplomatic maturity needed , the poverty and the unalphabatised mases will always stand as an obstacle to their lands' progress . Finally i was very pleased to see for the first time in a foreign book a chapter about the merely occupied and still divided island of Cyprus , an overlooked national drama which hasn't received the attention it should have for over than thirty years now .

A series of essays based on visits to Africa and Latin America that exposes Kapuscinski's almost pathological need to get as far behind the scenes of bloody revolution and savage civil war as possible. The absolute pinnacle of modern reportage. The world is deeply indebted to the author for gathering the searing stories that otherwise would have remained largely untold. Had Kapuscinski hailed from the USA or perhaps a more affluent European nation, rather than his native Poland, he would surely have won a Pulitzer by now.

In the world of journalism, no one compares to Kapuscinski. For the sheer range of his intelligence, perception, bravery, and compassion, he stands unique; and in this book he collects the essence of what both allowed him and drove him to achieve his remarkable career. I'm always wary of journalists who try to summarize cultures other than their own--reducing a country's worth of people and all their pain, suffering, history, and joy into a few pithy phrases. But Kapuscinski writes with a combination of humility and experience that allows him to surpass the cynical superiority to which foreign correspondents are so often heir. Nor does he ever stoop to describing his travels as a set of exotic adventures and near misses with death. Instead, his sense of history and culture always blends his own activities with the larger political picture in a way which illuminates both. The overriding theme of THE SOCCER WAR is journalism--what it can be and what it can never be. The book's final essay, in which Kapuscinski, crouched by a fire in Ghana, contemplates his readers at home and the friends he sits with, is as fine a summary of the inherent contradictions of the calling as has ever been written. In these final pages, Kapuscinski condemns, celebrates, and demonstrates both the necessity and the impossibility of this strangest of all modern professions in a way that should haunt both journalists and anyone who has ever read a newspaper.