Kapuściński five year death anniversary

His life and output were recalled at a meeting in the public library in the town of Pinsk in Belarus, where Kapuściński was born on 4 March 1932.

He maintained close contacts with Pinsk all his life and planned to write a book about the town’s pre-war history. Warsaw University marks today’s anniversary with a get-together of writers, critics and readers of Kapuścinski books.

Kapuściński began his career as a reporter covering domestic developments.

But it was as a foreign correspondent that he gained enormous reputation. His first foreign assignment was to India in 1956.

During his long stint as Poland’s only foreign correspondent in Africa in the 1960s and 70s, he witnessed 27 revolutions and coups.

Gradually he realized that in newspaper articles he was not able to describe the complexity of the political situation and so he began to write books that used literary techniques.

The Emperor was an account of the downfall of Ethiopian dictator Haile Selasie. The Shah of Shahs – of the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty and the fundamentalist revolution in Iran. Another Day of Life focuses on the collapse of the colonial empire in Portuguese Angola.

In Imperium, published in 1993, Kapuscinski turned his eye onto the Soviet Union and the effect of totalitarianism on everyday Russian life. The book is a record of his travels from the Polish border to Vladivostok, and from the White Sea to Azerbejdjan.

He also wrote poems and essays, and had exhibitions of photographs. His books have been translated into many languages.

Last year, Artur Domosławski published Kapuscinski - non fiction, a book which knocks the writer off his pedestal as it probes into his alleged communist past, contacts with the secret police and occasional love affairs.

The biography also points to the factual errors in Kapuściński’s books. According to Domosławski, contrary to what he claimed Kapuścinski never met figures such as Che Guevara or Salvador Allende. (mk)