Imperium | Ryszard Kapuściński | Granta

Imperium

Ryszard Kapuściński

Translated by Klara Glowczewska

Ryszard Kapuściński, once the only foreign correspondent for the Polish Press Agency, on the concept of borders.

Ryszard Kapuściński

Ryszard Kapuscinski was born in 1932 in Pinsk in eastern Poland and educated in Warsaw. His first book, The Polish Bush, which reported from the Polish 'frontier', appeared in 1962 and was an immediate best-seller. He travelled widely throughout the Third World as a foreign correspondent, storing up, as he once said in an interview, the experiences for the books that would come later. The first of these books, published in 1968, was based on a journey through Islamic Russia. This was followed by books on Africa, Latin America and South Africa. His first book to be translated into English was The Emperor, based on the last days of Haile Selassie. His other books in English include Another Day of Life, about the war in Angola, and Shah of Shahs, about the revolution in Iran. He is also the author of the highly acclaimed Imperium, the story of his travels across the dying empire of the Soviet Union in 1989, which is also published by Granta Books. Ryszard Kapuscinski died in Warsaw in January 2007 at the age of seventy-four.

More about the author →

Translated by Klara Glowczewska

Klara Glowczewska was born in Warsaw, Poland, and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, Cairo, Egypt, and New Canaan, Connecticut. She has translated, from the Polish to English, two books by the internationally acclaimed writer Ryszard Kapuściński, about the former Soviet Union (Imperium) and Africa (The Shadow of the Sun). Klara Glowczewska was appointed Editor in Chief of Condé Nast Traveler in January 2005, having served as the magazine’s Executive Editor since December 1992.

More about the translator →