Ryszard Kapuściński
| Ryszard Kapuściński | |
|---|---|
Kapuściński in 1997
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| Born |
March 4, 1932 Pińsk, Poland (now in Brest Voblast, Belarus) |
| Died | January 23, 2007 (aged 74) Warsaw, Poland |
| Occupation | Historian and journalist |
Ryszard Kapuściński (Polish: [ˈrɨʂart kapuɕˈt͡ɕiɲski]; March 4, 1932 – January 23, 2007) was a Polish reporter, journalist, traveller, photographer, poet and writer whose dispatches in book form brought him a global reputation. Widely considered a serious candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature during his lifetime, he is one of the Polish writers most frequently translated into foreign languages.
In an obituary published in Der Spiegel, Kapuściński was described by German journalist Claus Christian Malzahn as "one of the most credible journalists the world has ever seen".Daniel Alarcón, a Peruvian-American novelist, cited Kapuściński as a formative influence together with Dostoyevsky. The American journalist and reportage-writer Richard Bernstein, saw value in the "penetrating intelligence" of Kapuściński's vision and in his "crystallised descriptive" style of writing. The British journalist Bill Deedes, who had witnessed the Rwandan Genocide first-hand, said of Kapuściński that what he "writes about Africa is authoritative as well as captivating. His account of how the Hutus and the Tutsis were drawn into that dark night of genocide in Rwanda is the most enlightening I have read anywhere" – even while, at the same time, proclaiming that it was Kapuściński who had "transformed journalism into literature in his writings about Africa". Professor Philip Melling of Swansea University has concurred with this opinion, citing Kapuściński as an authority on the Rwandan conflict.
He was celebrated by other practitioners of the genre. The acclaimed Italian reportage-writer Tiziano Terzani, Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, and Chilean writer Luis Sepúlveda having accorded him the title "Maestro".
Ryszard Kapuściński was born in Pinsk (now in Belarus), Polesie Voivodeship, in the Kresy Wschodnie or eastern borderlands of the Second Polish Republic in 1932 as a son of Maria Bobka (b. 1910) and Józef Kapuściński (b. 1903), primary school teachers. Next year his sister Barbara was born. He was born into poverty: he would say later that he felt at home in Africa as "food was scarce there too and everyone was also barefoot." In September 1938 Ryszard started attending Primary School No 5 in Pinsk. Summer of 1939 he spent together with his mother and sister in village Pawłów near Rejowiec in Lublin Voivodeship. When the Second World War began in September 1939 they came back to Pinsk after the city was captured by the Red Army and Ryszard returned to school there. In 1940 Maria, afraid of deportation to the East, together with Ryszard and Barbara left Pinsk and moved to Sieraków, near Warsaw. There they met Józef. Later the family moved near Otwock. Ryszard continued education in primary school in Otwock (1944–45). He described his early life in the book Imperium.
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