The heirs to Ryszard Kapuscinski, Poland’s best-known journalist
Literary non-fiction from a country where the genre is both celebrated and contested
RYSZARD KAPUSCINSKI’S ticket out of communist Poland was a correspondent’s job at the state news agency. From the 1950s onwards he used the freedom, and hard currency, to roam Africa, Asia and Latin America, soon becoming the cash-strapped newsroom’s largest billable item. By his own count Kapuscinski chronicled 27 coups and revolutions. Through often-reckless journeys, he collected vignettes of life in remote places and spun them masterfully into social and economic allegories. Poland’s most famous journalist was reportedly slated for the Nobel prize for literature in 2007, but died months before the ceremony.
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