Another Day of Life
by Ryszard Kapuscinski
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ryszard KapuscinskiEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-04-17
ISBN: 0375726292
Number of pages: 160
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Another Day of Life
Book Review: "What stories the world press publishes"!...
Summary: 5 Stars
... "I read many of the dispatches sent from Luanda in those days. I admired the opulence of human fantasy." This is Ryszard Kapuscinski's biting assessment of the quality of reportage by so many of his fellow war correspondents. Kapuscinski made necessity into a virtue. He was a reporter for the Polish News Agency, which could not afford the lavish expense accounts that so many Westerner correspondents had, who all too often had the tendency to file their dispatches from the 5-star hotel in the capital, after talking with those who frequented the bars at these hotels. Kapuscinski was either lucky, or quite prescient, (or both) managing to be in the right place at the right time. He was in Iran for the fall of the Shah, which he described in "Shah of Shahs", and in Ethiopia shortly after the fall of Haile Sellassie, which he described in "The Emperor." This book which describes the very last days of Portuguese rule in Angola in 1975 may not have the same intensity of insights as the other two books, but still, it is excellent, and is the only view that we have of these last days.
Angola is rarely in the news (or of interest in the West, particularly since the end of the Cold War). It was mis-ruled by Portugal for three and a half centuries, and its principal export was slaves. This trade was so lucrative and prolific that the country is still under populated. After the downfall of the Salazar dictatorship in 1974, Portugal's new democratic leadership quickly agreed to grant the colonies their independence, which included Angola, where a guerilla war of liberation was being waged for numerous years. There were three principal liberation groups, the MPLA which was backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, the FNLA, backed by the Western powers and Zaire, and the UNITA, backed by the Western powers and South Africa. The front was "everywhere" literally, whenever one band of these groups might collide.
Kapuscinski's first chapter describes Luanda during the final days, and the exodus of the Portuguese. (Most went to Brazil.) Among the many useful insights, the author mentions the poverty of the whites, unique among European colonies. There were white children begging in the streets, and his hotel maid was Portuguese. The author went to the "front," and in so doing took at least as many chances as Filkens, the NYT correspondent who wrote "The Forever War." Kapuscinski memorably describes approaching checkpoints, manned (or more accurately, "kidded") by heavily armed boys. One never knew to which side was their allegiances, and the wrong greeting could literally mean death. Later he took the first re-supply convoy (that got through!) from Benguela to Pereira dEca, near the border with Namibia. Angola was a place where the proxy wars of the Cold War were waged, and Kapuscinski reports on the Cuban involvement, and broke the story of the South African invasion.
There is an excellent appendix chapter, entitled "ABC", which covers most of the salient facts about Angola, the Portuguese mis-rule, and the war of independence. In the end the author admits an exhaustion with the living conditions and the constant dangers, and telexes home for permission to return, which was granted. In the process, he made a significant incorrect assessment: "It is more or less clear what will happen, which is that the Angolans will win,..." When he said it would "take a while" I suspect that he underestimated the extent and length of the fighting between the forces of Holden Roberto and Savimbi, which would last through 2002. Today Angola is still notorious for the number of land mines that plague the country.
Overall, the book is "another day of life", of Kapuscinski, who has written an excellent account, almost certainly the best we will ever have, of the last days of Portuguese rule in Angola.
Summary of Another Day of Life
In 1975, Angola was tumbling into pandemonium; everyone who could was packing crates, desperate to abandon the beleaguered colony. With his trademark bravura, Ryszard Kapuscinski went the other way, begging his was from Lisbon and comfort to Luanda?once famed as Africa's Rio de Janeiro?and chaos.Angola, a slave colony later given over to mining and plantations, was a promised land for generations of poor Portuguese. It had belonged to Portugal since before there were English-speakers in North America. After the collapse of the fascist dictatorship in Portugal in 1974, Angola was brusquely cut loose, spurring the catastrophe of a still-ongoing civil war. Kapuscinski plunged right into the middle of the drama, driving past thousands of haphazardly placed check-points, where using the wrong shibboleth was a matter of life and death; recording his imporessions of the young soldiers?from Cuba, Angola, South Africa, Portugal?fighting a nebulous war with global repercussions; and examining the peculiar brutality of a country surprised and divided by its newfound freedom.
Translated from the Polish by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand.
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