The Shadow of the Sun
Selected Book Details
- Paperback
- Author: Ryszard Kapuscinski
- Publisher: Vintage
- Release Date: April 2002
- ISBN-10: 0679779078
- ISBN-13: 9780679779070
- List Price: $15.00
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryWhen Africa makes international news, it is usually because war has broken out or some bizarre natural disaster has taken a large number of lives. Westerners are appallingly ignorant of Africa otherwise, a condition that the great Polish journalist and writer Ryszard Kapuœciñski helps remedy with this book based on observations gathered over more than four decades. Kapuœciñski first went to Africa in 1957, a time pregnant with possibilities as one country after another declared independence from the European colonial powers. Those powers, he writes, had "crammed the approximately ten thousand kingdoms, federations, and stateless but independent tribal associations that existed on this continent in the middle of the nineteenth century within the borders of barely forty colonies." When independence came, old interethnic rivalries, long suppressed, bubbled up to the surface, and the continent was consumed in little wars of obscure origin, from caste-based massacres in Rwanda and ideological conflicts in Ethiopia to hit-and-run skirmishes among Tuaregs and Bantus on the edge of the Sahara. With independence, too, came the warlords, whose power across the continent derives from the control of food, water, and other life-and-death resources, and whose struggles among one another fuel the continent's seemingly endless civil wars. When the warlords "decide that everything worthy of plunder has been extracted," Kapuœciñski writes, wearily, they call a peace conference and are rewarded with credits and loans from the First World, which makes them richer and more powerful than ever, "because you can get significantly more from the World Bank than from your own starving kinsmen." Constantly surprising and eye-opening, Kapuœciñski's book teaches us much about contemporary events and recent history in Africa. It is also further evidence for why he is considered to be one of the best journalists at work today. --Gregory McNamee |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Highly Disturbing Portrait of Sub-Sahara Africa
Rating:
The journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski provides three broad types of reporting in THE SHADOW OF THE SUN. In general, these examine civil and social dysfunction in sub-Sahara Africa, the mentality of Africans living in this region, and the overwhelming effects of their inhospitable climate.
Certainly, the great subject of SHADOW is dysfunction. Here, the types of this dysfunction, as well as their associated causes and effects, are depressingly familiar. In no particular order, these include greedy and unscrupulous elites, failed traditions and social structures, frequent coup d'états, ethnic hatreds, warlords, the legacies of slavery and colonialism, the paradox of international relief efforts, impoverished internal refugees, child soldiers with automatic weapons, and gargantuan urban areas without industry or jobs.
Kapuscinski's treatment of dysfunction is highly skillful. Primarily what he does is to write about dysfunction in a particular country at a particular time, often attaching a malaise or tragedy to a news story he covered in his thirty years of journalism in Africa. The effect is that these well-known problems are vitalized by Kapuscinski's direct encounters with them. Through his journalism, you are there to witness first-hand the effects of cupidity by the elites, brutality, or widespread joblessness. It's first-rate work.
Kapuscinski's second theme is the mentality of the people in sub-Sahara Africa. In this case, there's much to learn from Kapuscinski as he discusses the spiritual and communal traditions in this region. But the issue he implicitly raises in these discussions is: Do these traditions enable Africans to cope with modern life? Overwhelmingly, his answer is an unambiguous NO.
Kapuscinski's third theme is the heat. In writing about Somalia, for example, he observes: "These are the hottest places on earth... Daytime hours ... are a hell almost impossible to bear. All around, everything is burning... even the wind is ablaze... [in this] people grow still, silence descends, a lifeless overwhelming quiet." Likewise, a visit to a Mauritanian village elicits: "It was noon. In all the dwellings... lay silent, inert people. Their faces were bathed in sweat. The village was like a submarine at the bottom on the ocean; it was there, but it emitted no signals, soundless, motionless." The heat affects everything.
Kapuscinski does provide one upbeat chapter. This describes opportunistic entrepreneurship in the town of Onitsha (Nigeria), where men pull trucks from a sinkhole that is on the road to a huge open-air market. Nonetheless, the content of this book is mostly depressing. Malnourished people, he points out, protect themselves from the heat with their lassitude, since a person "...toiling, would grow weaker still and in exhaustion easily succumb to... tropical diseases. Life here is a struggle, an endlessly repeated effort to tilt in one's favor the fragile, flimsy, and shaky balance between survival and extinction."
Recommended.
The challenges are immense
Rating:
Ryszard Kapuaeciñski brushes a perfect picture of Africa's history, its present situation and mentality and the enormous challenges ahead.
Colonial period
The colonial penetration of Africa began in the 15th century and lasted 500 years. The colonial trade consisted principally of the export of slaves (15 to 30 million over a period of 3 centuries). This slave trade was in the hands of white men, helped by African and Arab partners, and was justified by the ideology that a black man was not human. It left Africa depopulated and ruined, and the rest of its population with a stigma of `inferior people'. This is one of the reasons why Africans accept criticism only with great difficulty. They consider it as a form of racism or discrimination.
Independence
During WW II, the Western allies recruited African soldiers, who, after being sent home, formed or joined national independent movements.
When after a long and mostly brutal battle African countries gained independence, the white bureaucracy was taken over by a black one, thereby creating instantaneously a new ruling class.
The euphoria of the first years of independence was quickly followed by disenchantment. The hatred of the masses was now directed against their own elites, who ruled through rigged elections, corruption and outright murder of the opposition leaders. Moreover, during the Cold War the conflict between the superpowers was also transplanted on African soil.
Army
Between the elites and the masses stood the army, which exploited the tribal and ethnic conflicts (the borders of the African countries were designed by Western political and financial interests). First, it presented itself as the champions of the humiliated, but after the coups d'état and the civil wars warlords could grab power and began to steal also from the poor.
The civil wars were fought by children soldiers, who could easily be recruited as their parents were dead and they were left alone and hungry in the streets.
Challenges
Together with the internecine wars, poverty and hunger drew the masses to the towns as they were looking for more safety and a better chance to survive. It created the problem of hyper urbanization. But the immigrants didn't find employment, housing or schools (even pencils). They became totally rootless with no identity papers, no money and no address.
The author remarks astutely that Africa cannot survive without an educated middle class, but its intelligentsia lives outside its borders.
This book contains excellent analyses of the historical events in Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, Zanzibar, Liberia and Ethiopia. There are also in depth portraits of Idi Amin, Charles Taylor or Mengistu Mariam.
It is a must read for all African scholars and for all those who want to understand the world we live in.
fascinating, can't put it down
Rating:
I absolutely loved this book. He has gone where very few have gone before. I learned so much about Africa while at the same time enjoyed hearing about his experiences. A great mix of personal stories, African history and social/political commentary. Cannot recomment it enough...
Varied memoires of veteran Africa hand
Rating: 
This book covers almost thirty stories from Africa by the legendary Polish correspondent and writer starting when he first arrived on the continent in 1958 almost until his death in 2007. He was around during the defining moments when many of the countries gained their independence and through the numerous coups and upheavals that ensued. Some of the most interesting stories include the ones when during the 1963 revolution in Zanzibar he first struggles to get to--and then off--the island ('Zanzibar') and when he describes the 1966 coup in Nigeria ('The Anatomy of a Coup d'Etat'). I also very much appreciated the more straightforward history pieces, like the masterful 'A Lecture on Rwanda' and 'The Cooling Hell' which combines travel notes to Liberia with an expose on the depressing history of the country. Also, many of the essays that recount his own experiences in Africa, especially in the early years are very insightful. The reason why I have dropped one star from my rating is that I found some of his musings on African cultural issues to be somewhat tedious. His descriptions of the life in the villages, the animistic tenets and so forth tend to be verbose and too flowery for my taste. I also found his frequent use of rhetorical questions quite annoying at times. Nevertheless, this is a book definitely worth reading for anyone interested in Africa.
An amazing supplementary read when you visit the continent
Rating:
As I am no authority on whether there are other as accomplished travel writers on Africa I can only say I truly enjoyed reading this book while traveling overland in East Africa the past month.
He is a great narrator and from first hand account I can only say his observations are excellent. You look out of the window and see the pictures he paints and you read the book and see many of the sights you have had over the past days.
I dont think this book was ever meant as a complete analysis of the continent but merely as observations, images and experiences from 'off the beaten track' - a feat that was more than accomplished.
A must read for anyone spending any serious time traveling Africa.
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