Another Day of Life

I promised my publisher, who edited Kapuscinski, a book as elemental, pure, and wild as Kapuscinski's seminal account of the Angolan independence struggle in 1975.

Though I’m not sure I succeeded, Breakup is that book.

I was inspired by this classic of reportage for its simple and profound observations of the city, and countryside, trying to make sense of the chaos and what Angolans, in Portuguese, called confusão.

OK, this one has nothing to do with a heroic youth, although I’m sure there was no shortage of them during the Angolan Civil War in 1975. This is quite simply my favorite book about Africa. As a career journalist, I can appreciate the courage necessary for Kapuscinski to continue reporting in war-torn Angola when most other journalists had long fled. He is remarkably dogged in pursuing this important story that would affect the world well beyond Angola’s borders. Assuming his reporting is accurate (the veracity of Kapuscinski’s work has been questioned since his death in 2007) this book is… show more.

The end of colonialism seen from one, obscure corner of the continent: then-unknown Angola, left ”orphan” by the sudden exit of its Portuguese rulers and dropping into further pre-oil boom obscurity and tragedy. A small book in number of pages, but probably one of the most stunning reads by that genius of story-telling that was Kapuscinski, a reporter who was writing novels even when he pretended they were newspaper reportage. An unforgettable portrait of an Africa officially dated 1975, but eternal.

Like Larry Devlin, Kapuscinski can spin up a whirlwind of a tale, even if it’s hard to believe one man can be at the center of so much turmoil. The Africa correspondent for the Polish Press Agency in the Cold War 1970s, Kapuscinski recalls Portugal’s catastrophic, chaotic withdrawal from Luanda after centuries of misrule and abuse. He stamps an indelible imprint of the abandonment of Luanda that you can’t unread.