{"id":1787,"date":"2007-01-28T22:58:05","date_gmt":"2007-01-28T22:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/2007\/01\/ryszard_kapusci\/"},"modified":"2007-01-28T22:58:05","modified_gmt":"2007-01-28T22:58:05","slug":"ryszard_kapusci","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/ryszard_kapusci\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryszard Kapuscinski"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sad to hear that veteran Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski <a href=\"http:\/\/books.guardian.co.uk\/obituaries\/story\/0,,1997953,00.html\">died<\/a> last week. I first came across him when I started reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.granta.com\/\">Granta<\/a> many years ago. To be honest I was intrigued by a magazine that came in a paperback book format. But two writers from those early editions really stood out for me: James Fenton&#8217;s reportage from his times in Vietnam amongst other places, collected in the book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/1862077835\">All The Wrong Places<\/a>; and Kapucinski who&#8217;s reporting came from absolutely all over the world.<br \/>\nThere are loads of books by him, but maybe ones to start with include <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Soccer-War-Ryszard-Kapuscinski\/dp\/1862071063\">The Soccer War<\/a> (only one part of the book), and his more recently published <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Shadow-Sun-My-African-Life\/dp\/0140292624\">The Shadow and the Sun<\/a> detailing his time in Africa.<br \/>\nThe remarkable thing about Kapuscinski is what he was able to do at a time when Poland was behind the Iron Curtain, and freedom of travel was not something bestowed lightly by the State.<br \/>\nAs befits the man, there are obituaries all over the place. But here are ones from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/01\/24\/world\/europe\/24kapuscinski.html?_r=2&#038;ref=world&#038;oref=slogin&#038;oref=slogin\">The New York Times<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/books.guardian.co.uk\/obituaries\/story\/0,,1997953,00.html\">The Guardian<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&#038;grid=&#038;xml=\/news\/2007\/01\/25\/db2502.xml\">The Telegraph<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/article\/0,,60-2564137,00.html\">The Times<\/a>.<br \/>\nGranta&#8217;s put <a href=\"http:\/\/www.granta.com\/extracts\/190\">an interview<\/a> conducted with Kapuscinski on its website along with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.granta.com\/extracts\/2226\">a piece<\/a> from 2004 (also reproduced in <a href=\"http:\/\/books.guardian.co.uk\/extracts\/story\/0,,1999555,00.html\">a shortened version<\/a> in this weekend&#8217;s Guardian Review).<br \/>\nFinally, worth noting is a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2158315?nav=tap3\">curious piece<\/a> in Slate. We know that American journalism is holier than thou, which in many respects is why much of it&#8217;s so dull. But Jack Shafer does argue convincingly about the less glorious side of Kapuscinski&#8217;s writing. Still Shafer does say that fats are &#8220;invited to pour benzene over my naked body and set it afire with e-mail.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sad to hear that veteran Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski died last week. I first came across him when I started reading Granta many years ago. To be honest I was intrigued by a magazine that came in a paperback book format. But two writers from those early editions really stood out for me: James Fenton&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}