This was a really interesting read. The book is full of short stories and articles from Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski's travels in the "third world" between 1958 - 1976. He has been in some terrifying situations. Kapuscinski travelled to some of the most dangerous places to bring stories to the rest of the world. He went places that no one else wanted to go. He is either really ballsy or a little crazy. One such story was when he was in Nigeria during the civil war. He wanted to see the road blocks so he travelled by himself - being stopped about 4 times by men with guns and machetes and once being dowsed in gasoline and almost being burnt alive.
I liked this book because it gave little bits of insight into historical violence in some "third world" countries. It made me want to look into the 100-hour war between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969, as well as Turkey's invasion into Northern Cyprus. Living in Turkey I feel that it is important to know some of these things. I was never really aware of how the Cyprus conflict was started - reading these stories makes me want to be aware.
I would recommend this book to just about everyone. It was a fast read full of information.
2 comments:
Glad you gave this author a try. Of course, being from Poland myself, I am very familiar with this author, we actually had some of his books on our 'required reading' list in high school. And yes, I think this guy is quite crazy but aren't all those good writers, at least a little bit?
I stopped by today because you're in the read-a-thon and I'm checking out everyone's site.
This sounds like a very good book. Thanks for the review.
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