I just finished reading “The Shadow of the Sun”, a book written by Polish journalist Ryszard Kapucinski and published in 1998. It’s a collection of essays about Kapucinski’s years living in and travelling Africa, from 1957 onwards. Erik Silmberg recommended it to me, along with another book “Imperium” by the same author.
Kapucinski’s initial assignment was to observe the end of colonialism in Africa. He talks a great deal about this in his book, and about the effects colonialism had and still has on African countries. Many of the descriptions are sobering and horrifying… the genocide in Rwanda, the outright insanity of Idi Amin in Uganda and Charles Taylor in Liberia, the decades-long and barely reported war in Sudan. He balances this with fine-grained, beautifully written observations on daily life in many of the cities and small villages.
The Economist gave the book a positive review in 2001, but states that Kapuscinski got some of his analysis wrong. William Finnegan gave it harsher coverage in the New York Times Book Review. Here are more reviews.
My take: it’s worth a read. Kapuscinski covers many historical events that you simply must understand if you want to comprehend Africa. I am no historian, but the book has certainly inspired me to learn more. The prose is enjoyable; the translator did a great job. Kapuscinski does at times comes across as patronizing — he overgeneralizes, and sometimes exaggerates — but on the whole the positive aspects of the book outweighed this. I did find myself wishing he had beeen more comprehensive by offering greater depth on fewer events, but that was clearly not his goal. Instead his essays are a series of mini-histories and quick snapshots of perhaps 30 separate happenings. You put it down with a sense of having been there and walked a mile in his shoes.
The book offers many answers to “How did Africa get to be this way?”, but none to the more thorny question, “How does Africa get out of the hole it’s in?”. I’m frustrated by this; Kapuscinski almost certainly has opinions, but he didn’t care to share them, at least not in this piece.
