Travels with Herodotus (Vintage International)
by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Book Summary Information
Author: Ryszard KapuscinskiEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-06-10
ISBN: 1400078784
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Vintage
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9781400078783
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of Travels with Herodotus (Vintage International)
Book Review: Weaving the ancient and modern world together through unique personal essays
Summary: 5 Stars
This Polish journalist spent a lifetime bringing Africa to his readers. His books are personal, sharing his own particular observations and point of view with his readers. His voice is unique, episodic in nature, its rhythms and interpretations drawing me in and introducing me to a world view that I never even knew existed. I first became acquainted with his work when I read and reviewed The Shadow of the Sun in 2002 but this book goes a lot further into his own philosophies.
Travels with Herodotus is his last work, completed in 2007, just before his death at the age of 74. In it, he combines his love of reporting and revisits his memories of his early travels to India and Africa with a copy of Herodotus' The Histories in his knapsack, weaving the tales of the ancient world into his own travel experiences. The result is almost magical and totally captured my imagination.
On one hand, he describes his own exotic world, one that I'm a bit familiar with as it spans the past fifty years or so. But then he contrasts it with Herodotus' words from antiquity, putting his own particular spin on them by raising questions about the feelings of the people who Herodotus writes about. For example, he wonders aloud what it must have been like for the men of Babylon who knew they had to fight the Persian invaders to the death and needed to conserve food. They therefore were ordered to choose one woman in their families to act as a cook and were ordered to strangle all the other women with the exception of their mothers. This scenario as well other images of horrific battles, tortures and sacrifices are brought to life. The people of the ancient empires are made real and their constant raging of war an allegory for our own times.
The book can be thought of as a series of personal essays. It put me right into the author's mind and I was right there with him though both ancient and modern battles. Once I got into it, it was hard to put it down. It gave me a unique perspective on the world and has enriched my understanding of human nature throughout the centuries. I loved the book and give it one of my highest recommendations. But be forewarned. It will be much too brutal for most readers.
Summary of Travels with Herodotus (Vintage International)
From the renowned journalist comes this intimate account of his years in the field, traveling for the first time beyond the Iron Curtain to India, China, Ethiopia, and other exotic locales.In the 1950s, Ryszard Kapuscinski finished university in Poland and became a foreign correspondent, hoping to go abroad - perhaps to Czechoslovakia. Instead, he was sent to India - the first stop on a decades-long tour of the world that took Kapuscinski from Iran to El Salvador, from Angola to Armenia. Revisiting his memories of traveling the globe with a copy of Herodotus' Histories in tow, Kapuscinski describes his awakening to the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of new environments, and how the words of the Greek historiographer helped shape his own view of an increasingly globalized world. Written with supreme eloquence and a constant eye to the global undercurrents that have shaped the last half-century, Travels with Herodotus is an exceptional chronicle of one man's journey across continents.
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