Recensione:
"Anybody who has any feeling for literature cannot resist [Kapuscinski]." —Salman Rushdie
“Here, in a nutshell, is the thrilling difference of Kapuscinski's African acculturation and the benefit to us of his extraordinary work. Whether he is hitching through the Sahara with a driver who knows nothing about the truck's broken-down engine, but takes it apart anyway, or returning to his routinely robbed apartment in Lagos, there is an egalitarian level-headedness — a looking across at folk, and not up or down — that comes from being, at heart, a man who knows what it is to be a part of the daily struggle. Someone who knows what it is to be subsumed by powerful forces, and not be a part of them...Kapuscinski, time and again, survives. We know this from his previous works and we enjoy it again in this volume of pithy reminisces — an eminently readable book by this fine, and remarkably modest journalist. (The opening chapter of Another Day of Life, in which the awful Portuguese colonists of Angola and then the dogs flee the capital Luanda, is one of the most compelling pieces of reportage about the neo-colonial experience in Africa I have ever read.)” —Noah Richler, National Post
“The penetrating intelligence of Mr. Kapuscinski’s vision and his knack for a kind of crystallized descriptive writing have never been on better display than in his new book, The Shadow of the Sun, which consists of densely eventful vignettes from his 40 years of experience in Africa. This book is a marvel of humane, sorrowful and lucid observation.... Mr. Kapuscinski has written a startling, sobering, mesmerizing account of a few isolated parts of a larger vastness, giving us sharper, clearer images and understandings than many more conventional and more comprehensive books have managed.” —The New York Times
“The Shadow of the Sun is [Kapuscinski’s] elegantly trenchant summation of a 40-year peregrination beneath the skin of the continent. In his latest work to be translated into English, the peerless practitioner of grand reportage filters the study of history and political analysis through the finely honed literary sensibility and journalistic acumen as he undertakes a reconaissance of the African soul...The book is a scathing indictment of the ideology of colonialism, and the ethnic and religious conflict and intolerance it bred...The Shadow of the Sun is neither pure history text nor political tract. It is one man’s reflection on his encounters with individuals...The Shadow of the Sun is impassioned storytelling that showcases Ryszard Kapuscinki’s keen sense of humour, abiding respect for his subject and uncompromising humanity.” — Globe and Mail
“[A] book [of] originality and power...In a series of short essays he tours the entire African continent, meshing lucid historical summaries with vivid, at times surreal images that attest to his high journalistic art (and to the skill of his English translator)...Kapuscinski gives faces to the faceless throng whom Frantz Fanon called the “wretched of the earth.” He gives them voices that we can no longer pretend not to hear, raised over the whine of the mosquito that almost defeated Kapuscinski, or croaked through a burning thirst that makes man and animal one.” —Claire Gigantes, Calgary Herald
L'autore:
Ryszard Kapuscinski was born in 1932. During four decades reporting on Asia, Latin America and Africa, he befriended Che Guevara, Salvador Allende and Patrice Lumumba. He witnessed 27 coups and revolutions and was sentenced to death four times. His books have been translated into 19 languages.
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