The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life Book

Polish writer and foreign correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski may be in the twilight of a golden career spanning more than 40 years but The Shadow of the Sun, an alternative record of his experiences of Africa and its stupefying white heat, is perhaps his finest hour. This for a writer who, to echo the sentiments of Michael Ignatieff, has turned reportage into literature. Drawn to the Developing World through an impoverished wartime upbringing, Kapuscinski arrived in Ghana in 1957 and was on hand to witness the tumultuous years in which colonial Africa was dismantled, resulting in born-again countries ripe for ransacking by despots. From the glare of Accra airport which greets him on first arrival, to the Tanzanian night of the final pages, he crosses savannah, desert and city by foot, road and train, searching out the two most important, yet inconstant commodities on the continent: shade and water. Threatened by an Egyptian cobra, cursed with cerebral malaria and tuberculosis, plagued by black cockroaches the size of small turtles, Kapuscinski intermingles the immediate and the reflective in 29 satisfyingly fragmented vignettes, encompassing historical narratives and personal experience across a host of countries, including Ethiopia, Uganda, Nigeria, Sudan and Liberia. While acknowledging European colonial culpability, he refuses to rinse his words in guilt. The Shadow of the Sun is reminiscent of Gianni Celati's Adventures in Africa, employing similarly symphonic atmospherics that can bear poetic witness to both the tragic history of Rwanda and the Ngubi beetle, which toils in the desert to produce the sweat it drinks to survive. As much about the plastic water container as the warlord and preferring the African shanty town to the Manhattan skyscraper as a monument to human achievement, what Kapuscinski, the author of Shah of Shahs describes is not Africa, which he claims does not exist except geographically but a distillation of life itself, through its religiosity, its trees, the frightening abundance of youth, sun that "curdles the blood" and terrorising, ruling armies that fall in a day. The first in a projected trilogy pulling together Africa, Central America and Asia, The Shadow of the Sun is an exceptional and humbling work of imagination and experience by a writer intent on liberating truths from fact. --David Vincent Read More

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  • Amazon

    Creates an account of post-colonial Africa seen at once as a whole and as a location that wholly defies generalised explanations. This book gives a sustained meditation on themosaic of peoples and practices we call 'Africa', and an impassioned attempt to come to terms with humanity itself as it struggles to escape from foreign domination.

  • Play

    In reality except as a geographical term Africa doesn't exist. Kapuscinski has been visiting Africa since 1957. Here he attempts to hold up a mirror to the ever-changing situations and predicaments of an entire continnet. The length of his relationship with Africa the depth and the variety of his experiences and his determination to avoid "offical routes palaces and big politics" create an account of post-colonial Africa seen at once as a whole and as a kaleidoscope of events entirely resistant to generalized explanations. As always Kapmscinski writes vividly about his experiences and the people he meets. But more than this he attempts to come to terms with humanity as it struggles to escape from foreign domination from the inoxications of freedom from war and from politics as theft. Kapuscinski has already written a highly regarded collection of essays on contemporary Africa.

  • Foyles

    '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 Kapuscinski has been writing about the people of Africa throughout his career. In astudy that avoids the official routes, palaces and big politics, he sets out to create an account of post-colonial Africa seen at once as a whole and as a location that wholly defies generalised explanations. It is both a sustained meditation on themosaic of peoples and practises we call 'Africa', and an impassioned attempt to come to terms with humanity itself as it struggles to escape from foreign domination, from the intoxications of freedom, from war and from politics as theft.

  • TheBookPeople

    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 Kapuscinski has been writing about the people of Africa throughout his career. In a study that avoids the official routes, palaces and big politics, he sets out to create an account of post-colonial Africa seen at once as a whole and as a location that wholly defies generalised explanations. It is both a sustained meditation on themosaic of peoples and practices we call 'Africa', and an impassioned attempt to come to terms with humanity itself as it struggles to escape from foreign domination, from the intoxications of freedom, from war and from politics as theft.

  • BookDepository

    The Shadow of the Sun : Paperback : Penguin Books Ltd : 9780140292626 : 0140292624 : 13 Apr 2011 : Creates an account of post-colonial Africa seen at once as a whole and as a location that wholly defies generalised explanations. This book gives a sustained meditation on themosaic of peoples and practices we call 'Africa', and an impassioned attempt to come to terms with humanity itself as it struggles to escape from foreign domination.

  • Pickabook

    Ryszard Kapuscinski, Klara Glowczewska (Trans)

  • 0140292624
  • 9780140292626
  • Ryszard Kapuscinski
  • 28 March 2002
  • Penguin
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 336
  • New Ed
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