The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat [Hardcover]

Ryszard Kapuscinski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1983

After the deposition of Haile Selassie in 1974, which ended the ancient rule of the Abyssinian monarchy, Ryszard Kapuscinski travelled to Ethiopia and sought out surviving courtiers to tell their stories. Here, their eloquent and ironic voices depict the lavish, corrupt world they had known - from the rituals, hierarchies and intrigues at court to the vagaries of a ruler who maintained absolute power over his impoverished people. They describe his inexorable downfall as the Ethiopian military approach, strange omens appear in the sky and courtiers vanish, until only the Emperor and his valet remain in the deserted palace, awaiting their fate. Dramatic and mesmerising, "The Emperor" is one of the great works of reportage and a haunting epitaph on the last moments of a dying regime.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Haile Selassie, His Most Puissant Majesty and Distinguished Highness the Emperor of Ethiopia, enjoyed a 44-year reign until his own army gave him the boot in 1974. In the days following the coup, the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski traveled to Ethiopia and sought out members of the imperial court for interviews.

His composite portrait of Selassie's crumbling imperium is an astonishing, wildly funny creation, beginning with the very first interview. "It was a small dog," recalls an anonymous functionary, "a Japanese breed. His name was Lulu. He was allowed to sleep in the Emperor's great bed. During various ceremonies, he would run away from the Emperor's lap and pee on dignitaries' shoes. The august gentlemen were not allowed to flinch or make the slightest gesture when they felt their feet getting wet. I had to walk among the dignitaries and wipe the urine from their shoes with a satin cloth. This was my job for ten years." (Well, it's a living.)

Elsewhere, the interviewees venture into tragic or grotesque or downright unbelievable terrain. Kapuscinski has shaped their testimonies into an eloquent whole, and while he never alludes to the totalitarian regime that ruled his native Poland during the same period, the analogy is impossible to ignore. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

""[The Emperor]" transcends reportage, becoming a nightmare of power... An unforgettable, fiercely comic, and finally compassionate book."
--Salman Rushdie
"Kapuscinski transcends the limitations of journalism and writes with the narrative power of a Conrad or Kipling or Orwell."
--Blake Morrison
"A Stunning exhibit; the interviewed subjects. . .enunciate their memories of the days of Haile Selassie with a magical elegance that. . .achieves poetry and aphorism."
--John Updike, "The New Yorker" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 164 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1st edition (March 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151287716
• ISBN-13: 978-0151287710
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #126,418 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > History > Africa > Ethiopia

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eyewitness to a Strange History, August 24, 2003

By 

doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Emperor (Paperback)

This is a very unique book presenting a seemingly casual investigation of the last days of Haile Selassie's reign in Ethiopia. Note that this is not a history of Ethiopia or Selassie's reign, so prior knowledge on these subjects would be an advantage. Kapuscinski offers clandestine interviews with members of the Emperor's court and ministries, as they watched the slow and rather bizarre downfall of the autocrat. While non-Ethiopians often see Selassie as an enlightened visionary and Moses-like leader of his people, the reality was much different closer to home. Here we find an entrenched demagogue more concerned with preserving his power with little knowledge of the lives of his subjects. He surrounded himself with yes-men with the same self-preserving motives, and like any fading dictator he regularly purged anyone even remotely connected to independent thinkers. In one interview, a member of the court regrets sending his son to college, as the young man became infested with ideas that were not loyal to the Emperor, though they were probably accurate. Kapuscinski's anonymous subjects underhandedly point out their leader's faults while constantly heaping titles on him like "His Enlightened Majesty" or "His Benevolent Highness." This indicates the leader's cult of personality and his employees' pathological fear of losing his favor. We then see the classic fall of an out-of-touch despot, as he was ousted in one of the weirdest revolutions of all time. This unique book seems like lightweight reporting at the surface, but ultimately offers numerous lessons in power and corruption, and Selassie's story offers many parallels for autocrats around the world and throughout history. [~doomsdayer520~]

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All Hail the King of Kings?, July 13, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (NJ, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Emperor (Paperback)

All hail His August Majesty!! That is what Haile Selassie heard from a nation of people that worshipped, but feared the King of Kings. During his most powerful years as Emperor of Ethiopia His Imperial Majesty was the most powerful person in this ancient culture. As Kapuscinski relates through eloquent anecdotes, his power and national approval would soon change.

The book is structured into three chapters, The Throne, It's Coming, It's Coming, and The Collapse. Imperial Palace inhabitants relate stories that describe the feelings and attitudes of those closest to the Emperor. Kapuscinski gives you a sense of what it was like to be in the palace in times of great affluence and abundance. Just when you thought it could not get any better, the feeling of revolution sets in. He describes how the people began to tire of the monarchy, loose respect for power, and grow increasingly hungry. It was captivating to read how the dignitaries tried to hold on to their imperious way of life, while the revolution was taking place outside the palace gates.

This book takes you inside the palace during crucial times of Haile Selassie's reign. You get a sense of what the people were thinking, but did anyone ever know what Haile Selassie was actually thinking?

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent treatment of an autocratic regime, September 12, 2001

By 

Louis A. Mandarini (Miami, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Emperor (Paperback)

Ryszard Kapuscinski's ability to get "inside" the foreign conflicts he covers is quite remarkable.

In "The Emperor," Kapuscinski details the rise and fall of Ethiopian King Haile Selassie who, for nearly his entire reign, was regarded as a god on earth by his people. In stark prose and devastating imagery, Kapuscinski lays out the excesses of the Selassie regime - excesses that ultimately led to Selassie being overthrown. In one particularly moving passage, Kapuscinski describes how leftover food from a regal banquet is thrown down from a window in the King's mansion to starving townspeople nearby. In that passage, Kapuscinski lays out the line between the lavishness in which Selassie basked and the squalor in which most of his subjects existed.

Arguably, the single greatest aspect of Kapuscinski as a journalist is his healthy respect for -- and knowledge of when to provide - the history of the place he's covering. In "The Emperor," Kapuscinski provides sufficient background on the Ethiopian conception of rulers as deities, as well as good detail about the wholesale slaughter of Ethiopians during the war with Italy in 1935. But he doesn't overdo it with the history, and that's what makes Kapuscinski's writing so good. As his later books, such as "Imperium," about the fall of the Soviet Union, show, Kapuscinski is a much better reporter than he is a historian. When he is writing about wars, revolts, uprisings, or other events he is witnessing firsthand, Kapuscinski is at his best.

Of all the works Kapuscinski produced during his years with the Warsaw News Agency, "The Emperor" is probably the best. As with "Another Day of Life," Kapuscinski's book about the Angolan Civil War, "The Emperor" lays bare a tyrannical political regime, and provides insights into why it collapsed.