The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life by Ryszard Kapuściński
For those of you who are not familiar with his work, I should mention that the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński was without a doubt one of the most celebrated writers of the 20th century. Many of Kapuściński's works have been translated into English and other languages, including The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat, a tale of the decline and fall of Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, The Soccer War, a collection of stories about Kapuściński's experiences in various Third World countries, and Imperium, a collection of memoirs and essays on the Soviet Union. For many years in the second half the 20th century, Kapuściński served as foreign correspondent for the Polish News Agency and covered coups, revolutions, civil wars and other momentous events in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Kapuściński's work received numerous international rewards and he is held in such high regard in his native Poland that in 2010 the Council of the capital of Poland, Warsaw, established the Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage.
The blurb on the back cover of the book that this review is about states that "The Shadow of the Sun has been hailed as the greatest modern work on Africa and as a dazzling literary masterpice." Having read all of this praise about the late Mr. Kapuściński, you might reasonably expect that I will give you a glowing review of his work. If that is the case, you will be very surprised and perhaps dismayed, if you are an admirer of his writing.
The Shadow of the Sun is without a doubt one of the best books that I've ever read as it contains prose of staggering beauty. Kapuściński is a writer who is able to bring the world to life and his descriptions of people, landscape and events such as revolutions are so poetic that very often one has to linger on certain paragraphs in order to fully appreciate them. In this aspect the book is a complete triumph and the comparison made with the Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul is completely justified as one has to wonder whether Kapuściński should have become a writer of fiction instead of reportage as he clearly has the ability to draw great characters and describe events in a unique way.
The book contains many passages of great beauty and perhaps the best thing about Kapuściński's writing is the way he uses numerous metaphors and other stylistic techniques in his descriptions. Here is just one example of Kapuściński's excellent prose:
The blurb on the back cover of the book that this review is about states that "The Shadow of the Sun has been hailed as the greatest modern work on Africa and as a dazzling literary masterpice." Having read all of this praise about the late Mr. Kapuściński, you might reasonably expect that I will give you a glowing review of his work. If that is the case, you will be very surprised and perhaps dismayed, if you are an admirer of his writing.
The Shadow of the Sun is without a doubt one of the best books that I've ever read as it contains prose of staggering beauty. Kapuściński is a writer who is able to bring the world to life and his descriptions of people, landscape and events such as revolutions are so poetic that very often one has to linger on certain paragraphs in order to fully appreciate them. In this aspect the book is a complete triumph and the comparison made with the Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul is completely justified as one has to wonder whether Kapuściński should have become a writer of fiction instead of reportage as he clearly has the ability to draw great characters and describe events in a unique way.
The book contains many passages of great beauty and perhaps the best thing about Kapuściński's writing is the way he uses numerous metaphors and other stylistic techniques in his descriptions. Here is just one example of Kapuściński's excellent prose:
"And finally, the most important discovery - the people. The locals. How they fit this landscape, this light, these smells. How they are as one with them. How man and environment are bound in an indissoluble, complementary and harmonious whole.
.....
With their strength, grace, and endurance, the indigenous move about naturally, freely, at a tempo determined by climate and tradition, somewhat languid, unhurried, knowing one never achieve everything in life anyway, and besides, if one did, what would be left over for others?"(1)
I've left a part of this passage out but I've made sure that it retains the original meaning that the author imbued it with. Kapuściński offers many such beautiful descriptions of Africans and the land that they inhabit. He explains for us in some detail how different African societies are from European ones. For instance, whereas individualism is a typical characteristic of Europe, collectivism trumps individualism in Africa and no one, even the rich, can escape it:
"But this is Africa, and the fortunate nouveau riche cannot forget the old clan tradition, one of whose supreme canons is share everything you have with your kinsmen, with another men of your clan, or, as they as say here, with your cousin. (In Europe, the bond with a cousin is by now rather weak and distant, whereas in Africa a cousin on your mother's side is more important than a husband.) So - if you have two shirts, give him one; if you have a bowl of rice, give him half. Whoever breaks this rule condemns himself to ostracism, to expulsion from the clan, to the horrifying status of outcast. Individualism in highly prized in Europe, and perhaps nowhere more so than in America; in Africa it is synonymous with unhappiness, with being accursed. African tradition is collectivist, for only in a harmonious group could one face the obstacles continually thrown up by nature." (2)
Kapuściński explains very well how the harsh climate of Africa transforms the natives into people who lack energy and are barely able to make it through each day. I've given just one passage below but there are numerous examples that vividly explain the differences between Europeans and Africans, according to both the writer himself and Europeans who remained in Africa in the years after the European colonialist empires were pushed out of the continent:
"After a day of heat and hunger, one is weak and listless. But a certain stupor, an internal numbness, has its benefits: man could not survive here without it, for otherwise the biological, animal part of his nature would bite to death everything that is still human in him." (3)
If you are a critical reader like me, you will have realized by now that Kapuściński often paints Africa in broad strokes. Although he gives many examples of his experiences on the continent, and unlike many other European foreign correspondents he actually made an effort to live the same way as Africans and to communicate with the locals wherever he went, Kapuściński makes generalizations about Africans such as the following:
"We are here among people who do not contemplate transcendence and the existence of the soul, the meaning of life and the nature of being. We are in a world in which man, crawling on the earth, tries to dig a few grains of wheat out of the mud, just to survive another day." (4)
Reading this you might think that Africa is a continent of people who struggle to survive every day, a continent bereft of intellectuals, writers, poets, artists, academics and all other people who spend a significant amount of their life pondering the meaning of life. Yet Mr. Kapuściński, despite his high intelligence and excellent observation skills, does not seem to realize that he is engaging in exactly the same stereotyping of Africa as the people that he criticizes. In fact, Kapuściński has the gall to state the following:
"Europe's image of Africa? Hunger; skeletal children; dry, cracked earth; urban slums; massacres; AIDS; throngs of refugees without a roof over their heads, without clothing, without medicines, water, or bread.
The world, therefore, rushes in with aid.
Today, as in the past, Africa is regarded as an object, as the reflection of some alien star, as the stomping ground of colonizers, merchants, missionaries, ethnographers, large charitable organizations (more than eighty are active in Ethiopia alone).
Meantime, most importantly, it exists for itself alone, within itself, a timeless, sealed, separate continent..." (5)
The last sentence in this passage made me pause as it reminded of the time when former French President Nicholas Sarkozy said a few years ago that "the African man has not yet entered history". One would think that someone such as Mr. Kapuściński who feels great sympathy for the plight of many poor, starving and suffering Africans would realize that despite their plight, they are part of the long history of the African continent. Yet Mr. Kapuściński astounds us even further by making an even more extraordinary statement:
"History does not exist beyond that which we are able to recount here and now. The kind of history known in Europe as scholarly and objective can never arise here, because the African past has no documents or records, and each generation, listening to the verses being transmitted to it, changed it and continues to change it, modifies and embellishes it. But as a result history, free of the weight of archives, of the constraints of dates and date, achieves here its purest, crystalline form - that of myth.
In these myths, instead of dates and mechanical measures of time - days, months, years - other designations appear, like "long ago", "very long ago", "so long ago that no one remembers." Within these time frames everything can still be placed and arranged in a temporal hierarchy, only that within it time will not evolve in a linear fashion, but will mimic the uniform, circular revolutions of our planet. In this of view of time, the notion of development does not exist; it is replaced by the notion of the abiding. Africa is eternal abiding." (6)
I find it difficult to decide how to begin my criticism of this passage. To state that Africa does not have any history "beyond that which we are able to recount here and now" is not just false but also incredibly ignorant. Today I spent several hours at SOAS (The School of Oriental and African Studies) near Russell Square and walking through of the corridors of this great educational institution, I was struck by how much the field of academic studies devoted to Africa has expanded over the years. It is hard to believe that Kapuściński's book, which was published in Polish in 1998 and translated in English in 2001, completely ignores the significant attention that African history and culture has received in recent decades.
Another significant problem with this passage is that it states that the purest form of history of myth. I don't understand how any respected journalist can peddle such nonsense and be praised by writers from The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other venerable institutitons of journalism. Not only does Mr Kapuściński demonstrate his complete ignorance of the importance of the field of history, in the next paragraph he once again affirms the notion that Africa, unlike Europe, does not have any linear history as it exists in a kind of bubble of its own in which it never changes. I am almost tempted to call this statement racist although I do not think that Kapuściński felt anything but sympathy and admiration for the simple way in which many Africans live their lives and I doubt that he felt himself superior to them.
In fact, Kapuściński does criticize the behaviour of Africa's former European colonial masters and their role in the chaotic placing of the borders in this continent whose population consists of a complicated mosaic of many different ethnicities, tribes and religious. Yet the number of times that he makes derogatory general statements about Africans, which goes completely against his claim in his 1-page introduction that Africa is too vast and varied for one to even consider such a place to exist, makes it difficult to appreciate the times when he does make perceptive comments that tell us something true about the great African continent.
Nevertheless, I recommend that you read The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life even just to appreciate the beauty of Kapuściński's writing. However, do not take for granted what he says about Africa and go and read other books about this vast and complex continent, which is still trying to find its place under the sun but will hopefully never again fall under the rule of outside people and will finally be able to extricate itself from the trap of poverty, political instability and violence, which has plagued many, but not all, of its parts ever since the old, colonial European masters left Africa in a shambles several decades ago.
References
(1) Ryszard Kapuściński, The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life, trans. Klara Glowczewska, London: Penguin Books, 2002 p. 5
(2) Kapuściński, Shadow of the Sun, p.36
(3) Kapuściński, Shadow of the Sun, p. 113
(4) Kapuściński, Shadow of the Sun, p. 200
(5) Kapuściński, Shadow of the Sun, p. 228
(6) Kapuściński, Shadow of the Sun, pp. 317-18
Image taken from Amazon.co.uk
.....
With their strength, grace, and endurance, the indigenous move about naturally, freely, at a tempo determined by climate and tradition, somewhat languid, unhurried, knowing one never achieve everything in life anyway, and besides, if one did, what would be left over for others?"(1)
I've left a part of this passage out but I've made sure that it retains the original meaning that the author imbued it with. Kapuściński offers many such beautiful descriptions of Africans and the land that they inhabit. He explains for us in some detail how different African societies are from European ones. For instance, whereas individualism is a typical characteristic of Europe, collectivism trumps individualism in Africa and no one, even the rich, can escape it:
"But this is Africa, and the fortunate nouveau riche cannot forget the old clan tradition, one of whose supreme canons is share everything you have with your kinsmen, with another men of your clan, or, as they as say here, with your cousin. (In Europe, the bond with a cousin is by now rather weak and distant, whereas in Africa a cousin on your mother's side is more important than a husband.) So - if you have two shirts, give him one; if you have a bowl of rice, give him half. Whoever breaks this rule condemns himself to ostracism, to expulsion from the clan, to the horrifying status of outcast. Individualism in highly prized in Europe, and perhaps nowhere more so than in America; in Africa it is synonymous with unhappiness, with being accursed. African tradition is collectivist, for only in a harmonious group could one face the obstacles continually thrown up by nature." (2)
Kapuściński explains very well how the harsh climate of Africa transforms the natives into people who lack energy and are barely able to make it through each day. I've given just one passage below but there are numerous examples that vividly explain the differences between Europeans and Africans, according to both the writer himself and Europeans who remained in Africa in the years after the European colonialist empires were pushed out of the continent:
"After a day of heat and hunger, one is weak and listless. But a certain stupor, an internal numbness, has its benefits: man could not survive here without it, for otherwise the biological, animal part of his nature would bite to death everything that is still human in him." (3)
If you are a critical reader like me, you will have realized by now that Kapuściński often paints Africa in broad strokes. Although he gives many examples of his experiences on the continent, and unlike many other European foreign correspondents he actually made an effort to live the same way as Africans and to communicate with the locals wherever he went, Kapuściński makes generalizations about Africans such as the following:
"We are here among people who do not contemplate transcendence and the existence of the soul, the meaning of life and the nature of being. We are in a world in which man, crawling on the earth, tries to dig a few grains of wheat out of the mud, just to survive another day." (4)
Reading this you might think that Africa is a continent of people who struggle to survive every day, a continent bereft of intellectuals, writers, poets, artists, academics and all other people who spend a significant amount of their life pondering the meaning of life. Yet Mr. Kapuściński, despite his high intelligence and excellent observation skills, does not seem to realize that he is engaging in exactly the same stereotyping of Africa as the people that he criticizes. In fact, Kapuściński has the gall to state the following:
"Europe's image of Africa? Hunger; skeletal children; dry, cracked earth; urban slums; massacres; AIDS; throngs of refugees without a roof over their heads, without clothing, without medicines, water, or bread.
The world, therefore, rushes in with aid.
Today, as in the past, Africa is regarded as an object, as the reflection of some alien star, as the stomping ground of colonizers, merchants, missionaries, ethnographers, large charitable organizations (more than eighty are active in Ethiopia alone).
Meantime, most importantly, it exists for itself alone, within itself, a timeless, sealed, separate continent..." (5)
The last sentence in this passage made me pause as it reminded of the time when former French President Nicholas Sarkozy said a few years ago that "the African man has not yet entered history". One would think that someone such as Mr. Kapuściński who feels great sympathy for the plight of many poor, starving and suffering Africans would realize that despite their plight, they are part of the long history of the African continent. Yet Mr. Kapuściński astounds us even further by making an even more extraordinary statement:
"History does not exist beyond that which we are able to recount here and now. The kind of history known in Europe as scholarly and objective can never arise here, because the African past has no documents or records, and each generation, listening to the verses being transmitted to it, changed it and continues to change it, modifies and embellishes it. But as a result history, free of the weight of archives, of the constraints of dates and date, achieves here its purest, crystalline form - that of myth.
In these myths, instead of dates and mechanical measures of time - days, months, years - other designations appear, like "long ago", "very long ago", "so long ago that no one remembers." Within these time frames everything can still be placed and arranged in a temporal hierarchy, only that within it time will not evolve in a linear fashion, but will mimic the uniform, circular revolutions of our planet. In this of view of time, the notion of development does not exist; it is replaced by the notion of the abiding. Africa is eternal abiding." (6)
I find it difficult to decide how to begin my criticism of this passage. To state that Africa does not have any history "beyond that which we are able to recount here and now" is not just false but also incredibly ignorant. Today I spent several hours at SOAS (The School of Oriental and African Studies) near Russell Square and walking through of the corridors of this great educational institution, I was struck by how much the field of academic studies devoted to Africa has expanded over the years. It is hard to believe that Kapuściński's book, which was published in Polish in 1998 and translated in English in 2001, completely ignores the significant attention that African history and culture has received in recent decades.
Another significant problem with this passage is that it states that the purest form of history of myth. I don't understand how any respected journalist can peddle such nonsense and be praised by writers from The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other venerable institutitons of journalism. Not only does Mr Kapuściński demonstrate his complete ignorance of the importance of the field of history, in the next paragraph he once again affirms the notion that Africa, unlike Europe, does not have any linear history as it exists in a kind of bubble of its own in which it never changes. I am almost tempted to call this statement racist although I do not think that Kapuściński felt anything but sympathy and admiration for the simple way in which many Africans live their lives and I doubt that he felt himself superior to them.
In fact, Kapuściński does criticize the behaviour of Africa's former European colonial masters and their role in the chaotic placing of the borders in this continent whose population consists of a complicated mosaic of many different ethnicities, tribes and religious. Yet the number of times that he makes derogatory general statements about Africans, which goes completely against his claim in his 1-page introduction that Africa is too vast and varied for one to even consider such a place to exist, makes it difficult to appreciate the times when he does make perceptive comments that tell us something true about the great African continent.
Nevertheless, I recommend that you read The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life even just to appreciate the beauty of Kapuściński's writing. However, do not take for granted what he says about Africa and go and read other books about this vast and complex continent, which is still trying to find its place under the sun but will hopefully never again fall under the rule of outside people and will finally be able to extricate itself from the trap of poverty, political instability and violence, which has plagued many, but not all, of its parts ever since the old, colonial European masters left Africa in a shambles several decades ago.
References
(1) Ryszard Kapuściński, The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life, trans. Klara Glowczewska, London: Penguin Books, 2002 p. 5
(2) Kapuściński, Shadow of the Sun, p.36
(3) Kapuściński, Shadow of the Sun, p. 113
(4) Kapuściński, Shadow of the Sun, p. 200
(5) Kapuściński, Shadow of the Sun, p. 228
(6) Kapuściński, Shadow of the Sun, pp. 317-18
Image taken from Amazon.co.uk
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