The Shadow of the Sun

Muy recomendable. La visión real y del día a día de África.


https://lahierbaroja.wordpress.com/20...

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 me away. I feel increasingly uneasy.

There is too much of generalization. He states at the very beginning of the book of the diversity of Africa, and yet he constantly tries to create an identity for Africa, for the 'African mind.' All Africa is almost literate? There is no bookstore? Africa is so primitive? The continent is characterized by extreme ethnic conflicts, people identify themselves with their clans almost exclusively, failing to change and learn and adapt at all? He loses me just there.

Kapuscinski in some senses perpetuates the old myth of Africa. The land is exotic, the environment is dangerous, the people are hungry, poor, sad, fighting all the time. The hero of the book, the author, truly went through a lot and survived, heroically, with more understanding of life, of Africa and African mind. Africa appears so helpless. It doesn't have a voice here. Kapuscinski speaks for all, authoritatively. The author holds a secret pride of him being different, different from African and also from other "whites."

Just another piece of writing that follows the tradition of orientalism. Yes he is humane. Yes he tries hard to understand the people, from the micro level. Yes he observes, he experiences, sees many things. Yes his writing is undeniably beautiful. But enjoy it for its literary quality, not for the factual image of Africa.

Yet still three stars for the sympathetic voice that Kapuscinski has.

Kažu da je autor ovim spisom stvorio novi književni žanr, reportažni roman. Kažem da je to irelevantna birokratska kategorija. Čitanje obogaćuje, u svakom mogućem aspektu. Tokom čitanja se sablažnjavate, plačete, histerično smejete, vičete i ričete, živite kontinent koji nikada i nikako nećete živeti, ovako i ovoliko duboko i autenticno. Čitanje koje peče kao saharsko Sunce i boli kao priča o groblju slonova, najtužnija koju sam u životu pročitao.

https://bezimenaknjizevnazadruga.word...

"Гебан" - насичена та картата ілюстрація Африки ХХ століття. Континенту тисяч племен, народностей та їх звичаїв. Не схожого на жоден інший, а тому такого особливого. Капущінському вдалося передати атмосферу випробувань, які впали на долю африканців, часом поєднуючи непоєднуване у єдине полотно захопливої розповіді.

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 officially so it reads like a series of letters across a long career working in the continent of Africa as it breaks free of colonialism and steps onwards into independence. Sometimes this takes him on a positive journey but far too often it brings him into contact with the dark horror or vicious oppression and poverty. Years ago i read Thomas Eidson's novel ' St Agnes' stand' in which a group of nuns are cornered in the desert of the US and as I read it my throat experienced the parched land in which they were caughtand i swear I felt thirsty. As I read Kapuscinski's accounts of poverty and degradation and the destruction of hope and joy I swear I felt just a little of that pain and sadness. He is masterful at making you see, of making you hear and smell and notice and this is a great grace. Salman Rushdie talks somewhere about novels enabling us to meet and hear and encounter people from whom we would normally flee, this journalist does exactly the same thing.

Across this book you journey through about 50 years and he touches down in various places and times. Tyrants and despots crowd around for your attention alongside the poor and downtrodden. The eternal optimist in his writing argues back and forth with the realist and some lovely achingly beautiful images come about. He writes of political change and geographical oddities, he writes of celebration and colour and welcome and then flips the coin and there is hatred and fear and isolation but through it all is this really wonderful sense of his real love for the African peoples. He does not shy away from the brutality and stupidity of things that have happened; he drives home the guilt and irresponsibilty of the previous colonial powers whilst not ignoring the obvious culpability of the fools and, much worse, the thieves and thugs so often in power now but over-riding it all his eternal optimist seems to gain the upper hand.

He writes fondly of the odd quirks and traditions and emphasizes the importance of cultures listening and learning and therefore beginning to understand each other even if not agreeing. I suppose, in many ways, this is an imprtant service his writing might achieve. He sometimes writes with his tongue firmly in his cheek and I found this an endearing breather after the sadness and bleakness of some of what he had to relate. Speaking of a growing relationship with his driver, Omenka, with whom he worked he writes

:On the day we first met, I gave him nothing as we parted. He walked away without so much as a good bye. I dislike cold, formal relations between people and I felt bad. So the next time I gave him 50 naira (the local currency). He said goodbye and smiled.........'

this, Kapuscinski relates, cheered him and so he gradually increased the amounts he gave to the driver and after each increase the man's response to him also deepened until

'without stretching this story out any longer, suffice it to say that I ended up showering him with so many naira that we were simply unable to part. Omenka's voice was always trembling with emotion, and with tears in his eyes he would swear his everlasting devotion and fidelity '

This humour might seem when taken out of context to be a belitling or criticizing of the driver but within the framework of Kapuscinski's admiration for Africa and its peoples it does not read like that. I chose the example purely cos it made me smile and was a wonderful example of his ability to create in such a way that you met the people of whom he was speaking.

There are so many lovely passages that i could just lift sentences and phrases from almost every chapter but that would be to fragment what is a really lovely creation, someone described it as a mosaic and that is a great image. For him Africa is ever alert to its chance for change and growth and so maybe the very last paragraph is a wonderful clarion call of hope and a good quotation on which to finish

'Everyone walked in silence to their huts, and the boys snuffed out the lights on the tables. It was still night, but Africa's most dazzling moment was approaching - the break of day '

(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 contemporary who knew Kapuscinski wrote a biography and his research could not confirm many of Kapuscinski's factual claims: for example some of the people Kapuscinski claimed to have known, to have met. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/me...

If this is the case, Kapuscinski would definitely not be the only journalist to have made things up: recently there was a scandal about a German Der Spiegel journalist, Claas Relotius, who was found to have invented things 'on a grand scale' for many years. https://www.spiegel.de/international/...

--------------

It's hard to know how to review such books and I have gone with the idea of viewing them as literature, glory-seeking, and even as... polemics alongside. Yes, because Kapuscinski is making political and cultural arguments for sure. But certainly it is disconcerting and I think that it would be good to suspend your belief about some of the things Kapuscinski claims as factual accounts.

While I already knew this, it's another good reminder that journalism is often extremely biased - at worst to the point of actually making things up to make for good journalism.

Though I enjoy travel journals of Africa, I found this book to be way overgeneralized and romantic. Yes, he has seen a great deal of Africa, but why must authors continue to try and describe such a diverse continent as a whole in generalities? I suppose this criticism only applies to the opening and concluding portions, but the last chapter was particularly bad.

n  La mia patria è dove pioven
Si tratta di un viaggio nelle terre africane più lontane e inospitali.
Un viaggio iniziato nel 1958 e durato quarant'anni, attraverso moti di indipendenze e guerre fratricide, genocidi e lotte per il potere.
Un viaggio tra la gente, per conoscere, capire, condividere. Con rispetto, col desiderio puro di informarsi, partecipare, descrivere, sempre in modo semplice e obiettivo; senza enfasi né polemiche, senza autocelebrazione né opportunismo; con curiosità e il desiderio profondo di essere uno tra la gente, con un encomiabile coraggio di fronte a situazioni estreme di sopravvivenza o di prima linea. Per poi riferire con chiarezza, solo per amore di verità e di divulgazione.
Corrispondente della stampa polacca, con limitati mezzi economici, ma con la passione del vero Giornalista, Ryszard Kapuściński, riesce a illuminare con la lanterna della scrittura, in questo appassionante reportage, i luoghi più bui e remoti dell'Africa Centrale, quelli che comunemente si confondono in un insieme unico, permettendo la distinzione dei singoli pezzi, dei singoli stati, delle diverse realtà, delle diverse problematiche (l'essenza dell'Africa sta nella sua sconfinata varietà).
Dà storia a un popolo senza memoria: non rimangono documenti, nessuno scrive memoriali (qui la storia è ciò che si ricorda; il prima non esiste).
Dà tempo a chi non conosce scadenze (gli Africani intendono il tempo in modo flessibile, aperto, elastico, soggettivo; sparisce ogni volta che l'uomo sospende la propria azione).
Dà "luogo" a chi non conosce confini (non esiste il concetto di spazio separato, differenziato, diviso; in tutto il villaggio non c'è una siepe, una staccionata, un recinto, una rete, un fossato o un confine [...] Questi uomini non si sentono legati al luogo dove si trovano; se ne vanno in quattro e quattr'otto senza lasciare traccia:[...] l'Africano è sempre stato un uomo in cammino).
Dà riferimenti a chi non conosce distanze (qui il misurare le distanze in chilometri è inutile e induce in errore; si misurano in ore e in giorni).
Un viaggio lungo, tortuoso, avventuroso, eppure affascinante, che accompagna fino agli anni novanta e apre una strada alla comprensione di una situazione che continua tristemente a evolvere e il cui capolinea si allontana.