The Soccer War by Ryszard Kapuscinski

"As I was driving into Cotonou, which constitutes half the capital of Dahomey (the other half, called Port Novo, is 30 kilometers down the road), I passed a car being driven by the AFP correspondent, Jacques Lamoureux, who started shouting at me: "Stop! Pull over! There's a revolution here!" Lamoureux was visibly elated, because Cotonou is a pretty little town, but a boring one and its sole real attraction is the revolution, which occurs only once every few months."

Another perfect collection of essays, comments and reportage from Kapuscinski. The above paragraph is written re: 1965 in current-day Benin. I have always remembered Benin as the country that my parents drove me through when I was 5 years old (circa 1982) which, when we crossed the border into it, my father cheerfully read out loud the sign that greeted us: La Mort aux Traîtres! (Death to Traitors!). As with everything else I've read by Kapuscinski, his reporting is sympathetic, realistic, and entertaining. If only half of what he wrote is True, then it's amazing that he lived to be 74 years old. This book contains brief histories and descriptions of the rise and fall of leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba, along with dispatches from the titular Soccer War of 1969 between El Salvador and Honduras.

Reading through archived obituaries about Kapuscinski (he died in 2007), I see that people like to point out that he, like all of us, had Flaws. Apparently he spent some time informing on acquaintances who were engaged in anti-Soviet/communist activities. That is Unfortunate. But I can't judge his situation or guess at what pressures might have led to this. I simply don't know anything about this, and it's not relevant to my enjoyment of his books. Something I can and will judge is an essay that a Gentleman Clown named John Ryle wrote in the Times Literary Supplement (I cite him because I am quoting him--but I choose not to link to it) in which he stated that, "...[Kapuscinski's] writing tends to be admired by those for whom Africa is a distant prospect: he makes the remote areas of the continent simultaneously more thrilling and more accessible to the western imagination." Africa is not a distant prospect for me, and yet I admire Kapuscinski's writing. And I think that's because he describes it in exactly the thrilling and accessible fashion that I have experienced and remembered it. Not that I was ever involved in anything as "thrilling" as Kapuscinski--but Africa was always welcoming and accessible. Maybe it's inaccessible and unthrilling to John Ryle.