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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
58 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Profoundly enlightening...,
This review is from: Imperium (Paperback)
I've read this book several time since I first chanced across it in the library several years ago. Kapuscinski's vision is unique since it is essentially unclouded by idealogical or political bias. His outlook is more cultural than political and he breaks apart the image (so prevalent in the U.S.) of the Russia is/was a monolithic and homogenous bastion of Marxism.The truth (not surprisingly) is much more complicated than that. Imperium reads like a travelogue across the sweeping expanse of that was once collectively called the U.S.S.R. Kapuscinski shows that the "republic" was never more than a far-flung and disparate collection of principalities yoked by violence to form a unified front. Underneath this exterior he reveals the ethnic, cultural, and religious tensions that have always threatened to rend the region apart, and now seem destined to set the various factions against one-another. All of this underscores the fact that Kapuscinski is one of the great writers of our time (although, regretably, his output is pretty limited). His writing transcends genre and is timeless and well crafted enough to draw the reader in no matter what the subject matter. Because he seems to have little to prove his vision is less self-conscious, less affected, and more mature than the most of the batch of current fiction writers. Read this book. Read it for the history. Read it for the story-telling. Or read it for the power and grace of its language. Any way you read it, you'll be better for it...
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating,
By Alex Teller (USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Imperium (Paperback)
I consider myself a lifelong student of Russia and the former Soviet Union, having read and studied a huge number of books and reports on the subject. But Ryszard Kapuscinski's Imperium is superior to everything else I have read and imagined. He is a keen observer and a superb writer; he has traveled to cities and regions where even the most hardened Russian reporters didn't go. His prose is gripping and the translation is excellent. Reading this book is a rare pleasure. I recommend it very highly to all those who want to understand what Russia is and why the Russians are the way they are. They are very different from the rest of the world and Kapuscinski unravels the mystery better than any body else. Having studied Eastern Europe for more than 50 years I can say this with a great deal of confidence.
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a step closer to the mystery of the Soviet Empire ;-),
By
This review is from: Imperium (Paperback)
Ryszard Kapuscinski is a guru to many people in Poland, and his books were always received with unending awe - because he traveled, when hardly anybody else could o anywhere apart from other countries of the Communist bloc, and moreover - he could write about what he saw... I still marvel how he managed to write so many things, which were in principle against the system, and still get published, but it is another question (Polish censorship was maybe not that tight or not that clever, or - most likely - clever enough to allow the chosen one his writing in the name of relative peace???).
"Imperium" is one of my favorites among Kapuscinski's books (NB. I have read the original, so have no idea about the translation, but after reading some earlier reviews I think it must be good too). I have been driven to the mystery of Russia and its acquisitions as well as to the phenomenon of Soviet Union for a long time, and here Kapuscinski gives a lot on these subjects in a concise form. The book is divided into several parts, starting with the author's earliest memories of Soviet Union, when he was a schoolboy of what is now Belarus, and with his surprisingly acute observations (reminding me of my own, never put into words, forty years later, when everything was already much more relieved, but still the school was mysteriously insane). Then we go through Siberia on the Transsiberian train (still a cult trip for many students in Poland, albeit it must be very different now), and proceed to the other republics of the Soviet Union. Kapuscinski traveled as a journalist, but always he managed to get something private out of each visit, which had to have an official program and probably nothing more was permitted. He talked to people in the forgotten corners of the Imperium and in the representative places, watched them, saw the ancient rituals and old habits under (and clashing with) the overwhelming, transplanted Russian culture, and wrote about it, preserving the memories and triggering in several generations the urge to see it with their own eyes, managing to capture the atmosphere of each place he got to... He evokes the image of "Homo Sovieticus", at the same time wondering about Russian soul. The book is full of literary allusions and connections and contains a rich bibliography at the end, which is also recommended. "Imperium", as Kapuscinski warns at the beginning, is a collection of observations and his thoughts, as deep as they can be in this form, but because the subject is vast, everything is treated personally and rather as an encouragement to inflame greater interest, and then more monographic works come in handy (e. g. reading in "Imperium" about the North led me to excellent books by Mariusz Wilk, a longtime resident of Solovki). I heartily recommend this book - it cannot disappoint!
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