Jeannette's Reviews > The Shadow of the Sun
The Shadow of the Sun
by
by
Goodreads changed my experience with this book. For much of the time I was reading it, I was mesmerized by the writing, flabbergasted by some of the information about Africa, and convinced I was encountering the continent in a nuanced and subtle and authentic manner. I planned to give a copy to my husband for his birthday and to recommend it to my book group.
Curious about what other readers thought, I looked at some of the almost 500 reviews of it on goodreads, and it was there that I came across one reader's reference to John Ryle's 2001 review of the book in the Times Literary Supplement (http//www.richardwebster.net/johnryle.html). Persuasive and beautifully crafted, that review points out numerous errors of fact within Shadow of the Sun -- errors that Ryle argues betray Kapuściński to be more mythmaker than journalist. Apparently some readers have argued that some of his errors don't matter. To me they do. When Kapuściński tells us, for instance, that the only bookstore in all of Ethiopia is on the university campus there -- and that it was completely empty when he visited it -- and that this is the situation in most of Africa, it makes a profound impression me. When Ryle, the scholar, tells us that on his last visit, "there were at least a half-a-dozen bookshops in Addis Ababa, all with books for sale, in many languages," I have to conclude that Kapuściński was either disgracefully ignorant or downright deceptive in crafting his "tropical baroque" (Ryle's term) fables. The long list of other errors in Ryle's review are similarly damning.
It's such a shame. Kapuściński may have been fearless and intrepid and he certainly wrote like a master. But now he's filled my mind with unforgettable images of Africa that I cannot trust.
Curious about what other readers thought, I looked at some of the almost 500 reviews of it on goodreads, and it was there that I came across one reader's reference to John Ryle's 2001 review of the book in the Times Literary Supplement (http//www.richardwebster.net/johnryle.html). Persuasive and beautifully crafted, that review points out numerous errors of fact within Shadow of the Sun -- errors that Ryle argues betray Kapuściński to be more mythmaker than journalist. Apparently some readers have argued that some of his errors don't matter. To me they do. When Kapuściński tells us, for instance, that the only bookstore in all of Ethiopia is on the university campus there -- and that it was completely empty when he visited it -- and that this is the situation in most of Africa, it makes a profound impression me. When Ryle, the scholar, tells us that on his last visit, "there were at least a half-a-dozen bookshops in Addis Ababa, all with books for sale, in many languages," I have to conclude that Kapuściński was either disgracefully ignorant or downright deceptive in crafting his "tropical baroque" (Ryle's term) fables. The long list of other errors in Ryle's review are similarly damning.
It's such a shame. Kapuściński may have been fearless and intrepid and he certainly wrote like a master. But now he's filled my mind with unforgettable images of Africa that I cannot trust.
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read
The Shadow of the Sun.
Sign In »
Reading Progress
May 13, 2009
– Shelved
Started Reading
June 4, 2009
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-8 of 8 (8 new)
date
newest »
message 1:
by
Ricardo
(new)
-
rated it 2 stars
Jul 20, 2014 01:45AM
reply
|
flag
Exactly. I believe Kapuściński was writing these diaries/essays beginning in the 1960s. As Maja asked, were they there at the same time.
While I've traveled to more than a dozen African countries but lived in one country that was stable & peaceful for several years, I view its people differently. However, Kapuscinski was sent by his Polish newspaper to places that were in the midst of upheaval or revolution or tribalism on a grand scale, not to gauge or report on areas that were peaceful & under benign leadership, rather a large difference. Bill
While it is a truism that we should mistrust an author who weaves his words too well, like others who have replied to you, my first instinct was to defend this book I was intending to read. An author who started writing about Africa in 1957 as a foreign correspondent from Poland would naturally have a particular angle of perception. His view would be limited, skewed, and in some places completely mistaken. But I believed I could account for it when reading, so long as the author was attempting to be honest from his perspective.
But, it is exactly that honesty which Ryle discounts, saying Kapuściński’s “writing about Africa is a variety of latter-day literary colonialism, a kind of gonzo orientalism, a highly selective imposition of form, conducted in the name of humane concern, that sacrifices truth and accuracy, and homogenises and misrepresents people in Africa even as it aspires to speak for them.”
But, is Ryle correct? Is The Shadow of the Sun just "European primitivist romance" projected onto African lives? His review contains a long list of "misinformation" which could be fact-checked. I cannot test all of Ryle's claims, but there was one which would seem to be most demeaning to Africans if Kapuściński was simply making it up: Ethiopia had one bookstore around 1990 and it was poorly stocked. Ryle writes that it is misinformation because when _he_ was in Ethiopia (the exact year isn't mentioned) there were at least six bookstores in Addis Abbaba alone. Fortunately for us, this should be pretty easy to evaluate: How literate was Ethiopia in 1990 and would you expect to be able to find a bookstore?
I researched it and actually feel like Kapuściński may have been telling the truth, at least as far as he knew it. John Ryle's claims of seeing many bookstores does not square with the contemporaneous account of Gail Nordstrom's review of libraries in Ethiopia which paints a bleak picture of the country's information infrastructure even as the librarians hope for a better future. She writes, “The general state of publishing in the country is deplorable; only 240 titles published were published in 1991, down 38 percent from the previous year. ” She also cites dry statistics that showed paper consumption in Ethiopia as only 25 gm per head in 1988, compared to 25 kg per head in industrialized nations.
And Kapuściński's point about the lack of books is echoed in UNESCO's history of literacy in Ethiopia. It says that, despite a successful literacy campaign, there was a major relapse into illiteracy around 1990 due to (among other things) a lack of infrastructure for books. (Google for ark:/48223/pf0000146064).
One must also remember that the early 90s was a time of major turmoil in Ethiopia. While Mr. Ryle can say that he personally knew of many well-stocked bookstores, it is hard to believe that that was the common experience for others at that time.
The main thing for me is that it appears The Shadow of the Sun seems to have been written as an honest recounting to the best of the author's abilities. While Mr. Ryle certainly has some valid bones to pick with particulars, Kapuściński does not appear to have written this book to promote any hidden agenda.
The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for some of Kapuściński's detractors who have tarred this book as equivalent to "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". When I looked into why there is such animus, the biggest sticking point appears to be that Kapuściński was required by the Polish Communist Party to write special reports on suspected CIA assets in the foreign countries.
The Institute of World Politics has a long screed on him as a "Communist Secret Police Agent", if you're interested in malarkey that acts shocked -- SHOCKED, I tell you! -- that the Soviet bloc would misuse journalists this way during the cold war. But, I'd warn you before looking it up that the Institute of World Politics is a radical rightwing American conservative group that tries to burnish the "intellectual" image of the Republican party by hiring academics such as Sebastian Gorka. (You may remember Gorka for being the cartoonish, bearded buffoon who defended Trump's worst actions in an over-the-top British accent. Or perhaps you recall him as the guy who went to Trump's inaugural ball wearing regalia identifying him as having sworn an oath to the Hungarian Fascist party.)