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Liked It “Ryszard Kapuscinski's The Shadow of the Sun is one of the most illuminating books to be written about Africa. Immense in its depth, and profound in its understanding, Kapuscinski writes with a journalist's flair. He merely doesn't report though - but transports the reader to this vast continent...” see full review » see other reviews » |
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“Ryszard Kapuscinski's The Shadow of the Sun is one of the most illuminating books to be written about Africa. Immense in its depth, and profound in its understanding, Kapuscinski writes with a journalist's flair. He merely doesn't report though - but transports the reader to this vast continent that sadly now we know only for pictures of starving children haunted by bloodthirsty vultures.
bunnychip9 wrote this review Monday, September 28 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
I hate the sun. I love sunshine but its heat as I know it almost kills me here in India. In Africa though, it is much worse...so much so that I suddenly felt glad that I face temperatures of only 33 Degrees Celsius out here.
“In reality, the sun comes out as if it were a ball catapulted into the air. We suddenly see a fiery sphere, so near to us that we can’t help experiencing a frisson of fear. ... It’s as if all night long everyone was crouching on his starter’s blocks and now, at that shot of sunlight ... the streets are full of people, the shops are open, the fires and kitchens are smoking."
Kapuscinski first arrived in Africa in 1957, and made many periodic visits there. Compiling all his observations into this massive work - he weaved an exorable tapestry of a land that was foreign to me. I was just stunned into awe at this book - he writes from a predominantly European perpective and there has been criticism about a perceived lack of guilt and consciousness about his region's role in the African chaos. There was just one passage that made no sense to me - and which to me seemed about the only time that Kapuscinski seemed all European-upper class - a description of a train ride to Senegal with a certain Madame Diuf. But nay, I am not going to crib. This book is a classic. Read it for in it lies Africa, well, as much as can be called Africa.”
“One of the most interesting books I have ever read. I have read the original in Polish and the amount of information and emotions that it describes, including cultural differences and history is great. It is a must for people interested in journalism and Africa (and journalism in Africa).”
Kat K wrote this review Thursday, August 20 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“I can't believe I have never heard of Kapuscinski before. This was by far the best nonfiction book that I have ever read about Africa. If I was to find a shortcoming, it was that each vignette made you want to hear more about the specific country and context about which he writes. Sometimes I feel like a "deer in headlights" as I try to make my way through the places I have been in Africa and I think I could really learn from his attitude that he carried with him wherever he went. He always seemed to be fully empathetic towards everyone he met and was never afraid to talk to anyone. Another post-humous discovery. I hope to read more of him.”
Seth T wrote this review Monday, August 17 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
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Andrew Hughes-Onslow wrote this review Tuesday, August 4 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
'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.”
“This author has impressed me, and I'll surely be looking for more of his books.”
TheLibrarian wrote this review Wednesday, August 6 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“That's one of the most informative books I've ever read. The subject - Africa - is so enveloped in prejudice in the Western world that an account from someone as knowledgeable is totally welcome. And it's not academic or hermetic knowledge, but one acquired under the sun, under tents, in the middle of the jungle or the desert, in close contact with Africans, either powerful or destitute. And it's a page turner. ”
Rodrigo C wrote this review Thursday, January 24 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
