Ryszard Kapuscinski was born in eastern Poland in 1932. His earlier books, which include Shah of Shahs, The Emperor, and The Soccer War, have been translated into nineteen languages. He died in January of 2007.

"Kapuscinski is a transcendental journalist. . . . He begins with appearances, for which he has uncommon gifts of poetry, irony and paradox, and clambers down them into essences. . . .He is writing about the whale from inside its belly."
--Los Angeles Times

"Kapuscinski is an enchanting guide, combining boundless stamina, felicitous writing, childish curiosity and the literate authority of a true intellectual. . . . There are treasures in this book. . . .It is a triumphant combination of bleak history and black comedy."
--The New York Times Book Review

"When our children's children want to study the cruelties of the late twentieth century . . . when they wonder why revolution after revolution betrayed its promises hrough greed, fear and confusion, they should read Ryszard Kapuscinski."
--Wall Street Journal

"A compelling and convincing narrative that examines the extensive damage done to entire nations, the human psyche and the physical environment....This is a devastating picture of Russia [that] penetrates deeply into the depressing truths of 70 years of Soviet rule, the borders, the fear, the inhumanity.... His portrait of the 'Imperium' is tragic, but ever so true."
--Professor Thomas R. Beyer, Jr., Middlebury College, The Boston Globe

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Pub date: 1995-08-08

Length: 352 pages