- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Allen Lane; First Edition edition (7 Jun 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0713998482
- ISBN-13: 978-0713998481
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.2 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 141,329 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"Luminous. . . . Like Herodotus, Ryszard Kapuscinski was a reporter, a historian, an adventurer and, truly, an artist." --"The Wall Street Journal""Enchanting. . . . Underneath its shimmering prose beats the unquiet heart of a fundamentally decent man and an uncommonly gifted observer. . . . It has a startling clarity and power." --"The New Republic""A work of art: so eloquent, so simple, that you find yourself marveling at its prose....a travel book that all students of writing and of literature ought to read." --"The Washington Post Book World"
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
As a novice reporter in the 1950's, the young Ryzsard Kapuscinski wanted nothing more than to travel outside the borders of Poland. One day, without warning, his editor called him into her office and told him he was being sent to India. 'At the end of our conversation, during which I learned that I would indeed be going forth into the world, Tarlowska reached into a cabinet, took out a book, and handing it to me said 'Here, a present for the road'. It was a thick book with a stiff cover of yellow cloth. On the front, stamped in gold letters, was "Herodotus' The Histories"'. "Travels with Herodotus" records how Kapuscinski set out on his first forays - to India, China and Africa - with the great Greek historian constantly in his pocket. He sees Louis Armstrong in Khartoum, visits Dar-es-Salaam, arrives in Algiers in time for a coup when nothing seems to happen (but he sees the Mediterranean for the first time).At every encounter with a new culture, Kapuscinski plunges in, curious and observant, thirsting to understand its history, its thought, its people. And he reads Herodotus so much that he often feels he is embarking on two journeys - the first his assignment as a reporter, the second following Herodotus' expeditions. Woven into his accounts of his travels are his retellings of Herodotus' epic stories. His whole life as a reporter is a dialogue with what he calls 'world literature's first great work of reportage'. What kind of restless, enquiring traveller was its author? he asks. 'Man is by nature a sedentary creature, settled down happily, naturally, on his particular patch of earth ...But to traverse the world for years in order to get to know it, to plumb it, to understand it? And then, later, to put all his findings into words? Such people have always been uncommon'.How right, and how satisfying, that those words should be among the last written by Ryszard Kapuscinski, the greatest traveller-reporter of our time.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
37 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Ryszard Kapinscinski was made Poland's journalist of the century in 1999 and judging by his writing must have been truly deserved. He wrote thrillingly of his travels as a foreign correspondant in the worlds toughest countries. Sadly 'Travels' is his final book due to his death in January this year.
Having recently read Shadow of the Sun I was eager to seek out more of his writing and was therefore delighted that this publication from 2004 has been translated. It does not disappoint.
This non fiction book covers three areas. His youth in post war Poland, his travels as a reporter for PAP in the 50s and early 60s and through out the book it is bulked up by his musings on the travels of the 3rd Century BC Greek Herodotus. All of this make fascinating and gripping reading.
RK always writes with humility and understanding of the hardship and bleak poverty he encounters. His empathy clearly stems from his childhood in Poland and he relates a moving story about himself at 10 years old with no shoes trying to fund a new pair for the cold winter by selling green home made soap door to door with very little luck. His stoicism in these harsh circumstances must have helped to give him his unique and intrepid personality. He goes forth with a sort of naive bravado setting foot in countries where there is civil war, disease and unbearable climate and in the begining at least unable to speak any language but Polish and Russian.
The stories of Herodotus are interspersed thorughout and are not always obviously relevant. Nevertheless it has made me want to read more about the Greek and I will be seeking a copy soon.
RK has perfected a simplicity of writing which is always interesting. He give the reader gold nuggets of information and insights into other worlds. His slightly gullible nature often leads to near misses including a close shave after being lured to the top of a ramshackle disused minaret in Egypt by a dodgy character.
This is a lovely final work by a great journalist.
From his thought of Herodotus - 'His most important discovery and that one must learn about them, because these other worlds, these other cultures are mirrors in which we can see ourselves. Thanks to which we understand ourselves better - for we cannot define our own identity until having confronted that of others as comparison'.
Having recently read Shadow of the Sun I was eager to seek out more of his writing and was therefore delighted that this publication from 2004 has been translated. It does not disappoint.
This non fiction book covers three areas. His youth in post war Poland, his travels as a reporter for PAP in the 50s and early 60s and through out the book it is bulked up by his musings on the travels of the 3rd Century BC Greek Herodotus. All of this make fascinating and gripping reading.
RK always writes with humility and understanding of the hardship and bleak poverty he encounters. His empathy clearly stems from his childhood in Poland and he relates a moving story about himself at 10 years old with no shoes trying to fund a new pair for the cold winter by selling green home made soap door to door with very little luck. His stoicism in these harsh circumstances must have helped to give him his unique and intrepid personality. He goes forth with a sort of naive bravado setting foot in countries where there is civil war, disease and unbearable climate and in the begining at least unable to speak any language but Polish and Russian.
The stories of Herodotus are interspersed thorughout and are not always obviously relevant. Nevertheless it has made me want to read more about the Greek and I will be seeking a copy soon.
RK has perfected a simplicity of writing which is always interesting. He give the reader gold nuggets of information and insights into other worlds. His slightly gullible nature often leads to near misses including a close shave after being lured to the top of a ramshackle disused minaret in Egypt by a dodgy character.
This is a lovely final work by a great journalist.
From his thought of Herodotus - 'His most important discovery and that one must learn about them, because these other worlds, these other cultures are mirrors in which we can see ourselves. Thanks to which we understand ourselves better - for we cannot define our own identity until having confronted that of others as comparison'.
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
If you have read any other of his travel books, this one is different. It's almost as if he knew it would be his last, and in it he reflects on his travels, and the reasons people travel, in a developing dialogue with a writer who could be described as the world's first travel writer, Herodotus. What comes through the book very strongly is Kapuscinski's humanity, and his genuine curiosity about the places and the people he comes across - and this aspect does link with all his other writing. There is clearly a serious level of allegory in what he writes, as one might expect from a writer who developed and wrote under the shadow of Eastern European regimes. It's worth the reading and thinking time - and he has made me want to go off and read Herodotus for myself. In a world which is riven with strife and warfare, his plea for openness to the other and curiosity about that which is different, rather than the rejection and destruction of it, is his most important message for me.
28 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is an unusual book, a memoir of an extraordinary life on the cusp of world events, interwoven with the fabric of Herodotus's Histories, a book given to the author early in his journalistic career. Kapuscinski has provided some of the most perceptive observations on the history of the second half of the 20th century and this beautifully written document provides us with an insight into his development from a young naive reporter in Poland to the alert instinctive scribe of his international reporting career. It seems that Herodotus, his constant companion, played a formative role in this progression. Herodotus's Histories are written in an intriguing style in which many interleaving strands come to their natural conclusions at the end of each section and in which no seemingly insignificant detail is too slight to mention. Kapuscinski in some ways follows this stylistic approach with what appear frequently to be digressions from the main text demonstrating their profundity as you conclude the chapter. The descriptions of ordinary and extraordinary events in Kapuscinski's life, Louis Armstrongs's concert in Khartoum, being fleeced by a secret policeman in Cairo and his arrival at the epicentre of a coup in Algiers reflect the humanity of the writer at the centre of frequently appaling events. However, the perspective of Herodotus in placing man's inhumanity in context is never far away from the centre of the narrative. Several themes predominate in his musings on the Histories. Firstly, the inability of great leaders to take good advice as frequently reflected in adverse decisions made by Persian emporors Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes in their attempts at world domination. Secondly, random events of outrageous cruelty perhaps best exemplified by the mutilation of Xerxes sister in law by his jealous wife and by Xerxes's subsequent killing of his brother and his family. Thirdly, the seemingly random events on which the course of history depends - a hare darts out as the Scythian warriors prepare to defend their land from the Persians; the Scythians ignore the Persian army to chase the hare, spooking the Persians completely, so that they retreat. The requirement for slaves in the creation of this ancient world would of course have resonance for the writer of Imperium, which details at an early stage the forced deportations of so-called dissidents including his former school teacher from Poland. As this is Kapuscinski's last work, it is tempting to speculate that perhaps the unstated message is that nothing has changed since The Histories and that he is subliminally tieing a thread between recent events in the world and the events detailed by Herodotus. This is a wonderful book, at one level deceptively easy to read but ultimately profoundly stimulating, provocative and immensely human, a cultural mirror in which much of the modern world is reflected.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A new look on life!
Travels With Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski, Truly amazing, a Polish man who is leaving Eastern Europe, shortly after the death of Stalin, makes a short stop in Rome and then is... Read more
Published 25 days ago by A. T. Lawrence
The first visionary on a world scale
Ryszard Kapusciñski's master companion in these hallucinating journeys is the book `The Histories' by the ancient Greek writer Herodotus. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Luc REYNAERT
what to expect
Just a comment on my own 'before reading' expectations, which were that Kapuscinski would follow similar routes to those described in Herodutus, that is, covering the same... Read more
Published 22 months ago by H. Julian
there's no better way to travel the world than with Herodotus
This book is a combination of reflection on Herodotus and his travels, and a life spent travelling the world in the modern age. Read more
Published on 4 Feb 2010 by Louise
A casual introduction to Herodotus
I didn't know Kapuscinski before reading this book, so I cannot comment on the man's journalistic reputation. This book is really an amalgam of two books. Read more
Published on 3 Feb 2010 by Wilmington
A fascinating weave
Kapuscinski was a great journalist and travel writer, and in part of this, his last, book he presents a few fragments, a minuscule part, of his wide experiences. Read more
Published on 28 July 2009 by Ralph Blumenau
Very nice
Although I expected (based on back cover introduction) a different type of book, it is a very nice book to read. Read more
Published on 29 May 2009 by Ryan
One of the classic travel books
This book is a very informative, enlightening and interesting read.
This book is a pleasure to read. It is easy to follow the author as he travels around the world. Read more
This book is a pleasure to read. It is easy to follow the author as he travels around the world. Read more
Published on 4 Aug 2008 by Mr X
A lovely and final work
Ryszard Kapinscinski was made Poland's journalist of the century in 1999 and judging by his writing must have been truly deserved. Read more
Published on 6 Jun 2008 by Sally Wilton
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