Imperium

Ryszard Kapuscinski's last book, The Soccer War -a revelation of the contemporary experience of war -- prompted John le Carre to call the author "the conjurer extraordinary of modern reportage." Now, in Imperium, Kapuscinski gives us a work of equal emotional force and evocative power: a personal, brilliantly detailed exploration of the almost unfathomably complex Soviet empire in our time.

He begins with his own childhood memories of the postwar Soviet occupation of Pinsk, in what was then Poland's eastern frontier ("something dreadful and incomprehensible...in this world that I enter at seven years of age"), and takes us up to 1967, when, as a journalist just starting out, he traveled across a snow-covered and desolate Siberia, and through the Soviet Union's seven southern and Central Asian republics, territories whose individual histories, cultures, and religions he found thriving even within the "stiff, rigorous corset of Soviet power."

Between 1989 and 1991, Kapuscinski made a series of extended journeys through the disintegrating Soviet empire, and his account of these forms the heart of the book. Bypassing official institutions and itineraries, he traversed the Soviet territory alone, from the border of Poland to the site of the most infamous gulags in far-eastern Siberia (where "nature pals it up with the executioner"), from above the Arctic Circle to the edge of Afghanistan, visiting dozens of cities and towns and outposts, traveling more than 40,000 miles, venturing into the individual lives of men, women, and children in order to Understand the collapsing but still various larger life of the empire.

Bringing the book to a close is a collection of notes which, Kapuscinski writes, "arose in the margins of my journeys" -- reflections on the state of the ex-USSR and on his experience of having watched its fate unfold "on the screen of a television set...as well as on the screen of the country's ordinary, daily reality, which surrounded me during my travels." It is this "schizophrenic perception in two different dimensions" that enabled Kapuscinski to discover and illuminate the most telling features of a society in dire turmoil.

Imperium is a remarkable work from one of the most original and sharply perceptive interpreters of our world -- galvanizing narrative deeply informed by Kapuscinski's limitless curiosity and his passion for truth, and suffused with his vivid sense of the overwhelming importance of history as it is lived, and of our constantly shifting places within it.

Ultima carte a lui Ryszard Kapuscinski, Razboiul fotbalului - o revelatie a experientei contemporane a razboiului - l-a determinat pe John le Carre sa numeasca autorul „conjuratorul extraordinar al reportajului modern”. Acum, in Imperium, Kapuscinski ne ofera o lucrare de forta emotionala egala si putere evocativa: o explorare personala, stralucita si detaliata a imperiului sovietic aproape insomensibil de complex in timpul nostru. El incepe cu amintirile sale din copilarie despre ocupatia sovietica postbelica din Pinsk, in ceea ce era atunci granita estica a Poloniei („ceva ingrozitor si de neinteles ... in lumea asta in care intru la varsta de sapte ani”) si ne duce pana in 1967, cand, ca jurnalist abia la inceput, a calatorit pe o Siberia acoperita de zapada si pustie si prin cele sapte republici din Asia de Sud si Asia Centrala, teritorii ale caror istorii, culturi si religii individuale le-a gasit infloritoare chiar si in „corsetul rigid, riguros al puterii sovietice.” Intre 1989 si 1991, Kapuscinski a facut o serie de calatorii extinse prin imperiul sovietic in dezintegrare, iar relatarea sa despre acestea formeaza inima cartii.