 Ed has been living in Poland for something approaching ten years. A graduate of history, he has worked for the BBC, CNBC European Business Magazine, Central European News, Independent radio, and was
correspondent for the business and current affairs magazine Poland Monthly, among others. He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists and is currently working on a history of Polish resistance during WWII.
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In the shadow of his own sun: Ryszard Kapuscinski Friday 5th March, 2010
"Kapuscinski’s books traverse a landscape of fact illuminated through imagination
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Reading Ryszard Kapuscinski’s The Shadow of the Sun, I was deeply-impressed. A sterling example of reportage at its very best, I oft-enthused to anyone who would listen.
Awe for the man grew upon finishing his Travels with Herodotus, and mushroomed when later attending a lecture on his life: witness to 27 coups and revolutions, a prisoner of 40 foreign jails, a survivor of seven death sentences - this was no Fleet Street hack. This was uber-journo, a tour de force once voted the greatest reporter of the 20th century.
To hear, therefore, that his career was made up of nothing more than lying and spying came as a bit of a blow.
Apologists and defenders dismiss the spying allegations. By giving the commies snippets of info, he was able to travel the world and provide some of the best reportage journalism has ever seen, they say.
Except he didn’t, at least he didn’t if the second charge is to be believed. According to journos covering the same coups, revolutions, etc, not once did they meet the man. Not once did they meet anyone who met the man. Ergo, he made up the lot.
But a distinction must be made between what he sent in dispatches to the Polish Press Agency he was working for, and the books he wrote. No one is questioning the veracity of his newspaper work nor of his agency work. The hot potato is the content of his books.
Journalists have a duty to tell the truth, and that was not Kapuscinski’s failing. His failing was not that he snipped and chopped interviews and observations for his books - the failing was that he didn’t make it clear to the reader that this was ‘literary reportage’.
Merticulous in detail, Kapuscinski’s books traverse a landscape of fact illuminated through imagination.
A pack of lies? Not at all. Rolls-Royce story-telling? You bet.
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