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Product Description:
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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Average Rating : 
Rating :  - The best book of 2008 (on my list of have-reads)
I am celebrating the first day of 2009 by reviewing the best book I read in 2008. And the winner is -- "Travels with Herodotus," by Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who died of a fast cancer in early 2007. This book, along with "The Other," was published posthumously.
Here is a man, landlocked and controlled by communism, whose greatest dream was to cross the border, just go over and return. A couple of years later, his editor sent him to India (!) with a copy of Herodotus's "Histories." This book was to accompany Kapuscinski for the rest of his life. And profoundly direct him.
"Travels" is a compilation of commentaries on some of his travels, Herodotus and his book, and its application to his own stories on the road. It is framed in memorable language--clear, vivid, and pictorial.
"He had a gray, ravaged face, covered in wrinkles. A musty, cheap suit hung loosely on this thin, bony frame....Tears were flowing down his cheeks. And a moment later I heard a suppressed but nevertheless distinct sob. "I'm sorry," he said to me. "I'm sorry. But I didn't believe that I would return."
"It was December 1956. People were still coming out of the gulags" (38).
On Amazon's Product Page, RK's friend Tahir Shah tells the reader that RK kept two notebooks on his trips. One was for his news stories; the other kept his travel notes that lead to his books. RK reveals his journalist's mind early on to ask all kinds of questions about Herodotus. What kind of toys did he play with? Who did he sit next to in school? Did his mother hug him goodnight? Where did he die? Under what circumstances? He reveals the journalist's propensity to ask questions.
When RK visited China for stories, he came to see the Great Wall as a metaphor...."to shut oneself in, fence oneself off" (59). This is the second assignment, the first being India, where RK discovered himself as The Other, which became the title of the second posthumously published book.
In his chapter on memory RK ruminates on what memory is and why Herodotus undertook his vast traveling plans. Because memory is elusive, he wanted to "prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time," so he set out on his "enqueries," which RK terms "investigations." He wanders the world, meeting people, listening to what they tell him, or as RK terms him: Herodotus is the first globalist. But he is also "a reporter, an anthropologist, an ethnographer, a historian" (79). Herodotus is "the first to discover the world's multicultural nature" and that we must know and embrace "others" (80).
When RK first set out to "cross the border' of Poland, he had no idea he would cover news in Africa, India, China, Malaysia, Central and South American. And in reading and studying Herodotus, he learns much about the world. In places where he had to wait, he spent it pouring over Herodotus's words and retells many of the stories therein.
If you saw the movie "300" with Gerard Butler, you may remember how huge Xerxes was--a literal giant. Herodotus makes no mention of such size, but does describe Xerxes in terms writ large. In other words, Xerxes was larger than life. This story is just one of many that RK retells from Herodotus, each more fascinating than the one before.
"Travels with Herodotus" is rich with details, observations, anecdotes, stories that require crackling fires. It is the story of Ryszard Kapuscinski's travels, it is the story of Herodotus's travels. It is must reading and will enrich your life more than you can imagine.
"His [Herodotus's] most important discovery? That there are many worlds. And that each is different. Each is important" (264). We could say that about RK's work, as well.
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