Customer Reviews
Beautiful attempt to describe and understand Africa - By: Renate Bahnemann, 19 Oct 2008 
It was the colourful front cover showing a map of Africa that made me pick up this bookin the store.
Ryszard Kapuscinski was a polish journalist who spent long periods of time travellingin Africa, reporting for his paper. This book contains articles from the late 1950's until the 1990's.
He writes about sub-saharan Africa: The landsin the west, the centre & the east of the continent. North Africa & southern Africa are not covered.
He writes about the African concept of time. He writes about their spiritual world. He describes the way they greet each other & about their laughter. He describes how thieves could be deterred by a few feathers strategically arranged above the door. He writes about ancient feuds & modern power struggles. He describes the landscape, the heat, the plants & the animals. Yes he does write about the horrors. He does writes about Idi Amin, Rwanda, Liberia, slavery, extreme poverty & disease. But he describes what underpinned those wars, coups & dictatorshipsin such a way that although they are no less horrible, one can understand them a little better.
I got the impression that this man really sought to understand. He talked to the ordinary people. He lived & traveled with them.
And although he says: "European languages did not develop vocabularies adequate to describe non-European worlds. Entire areas of African life remained unfathomed, untouched even, because of a certain European linguistic poverty." I found the languagein this book beautiful & hard to believe that I was reading a translation.
I can recommend this book to anyone who has an interestin understanding Africa. In my opinion this is a relatively objective report an that vast continent. In the author's own words: "The continent is too large to describe. It is a veritable ocean, a separate planet a varied, immensely rich cosmos."
If you enjoyed this book you might also find Out of America: a Black Man Confronts Africa (Harvest Book) interesting. It contains the views of a black american journalist.
awesome - By: Kharms, 25 Jul 2008 Read thisin Siberia recently. Awesome. K's descriptions of Africa went oddly well with snow & ice...
Vivid sketches of African life - By: jacr100, 22 Jul 2008 Few people were better qualified to relate an outsider's understanding of the essence of Africa than Kapuscinski, a journalist who spent four decades covering assignmentsin the continent that he loved. The Shadow of the Sun represents a compilation of vignettes that either detail critical momentsin African history - the rise & reign of dictators, numerous coups d'etat that befell them, genocides - or gently demonstrate how an African's mentality is not as rigid as our own: how time to him is a much looser concept, how he prefers community over individual, how he has different notions of culpability & cause & effect. That may sound crassly generalist but as narrated by Kapuscinski is not so: part of the book's resonance comes from its unifying themes, the ironic recognition that Africans, so often divided by tribalist politics, are a coherent people.
Yet although these universal themes appear, the scenes Kapusckinski draws simultaneously recognise the great variety of Africa; as he saysin the foreword, "only with the greatest simplification, for the sake of convenience, can we say `Africa'". So we witness the midnight rituals of the paranoid Amba, who believe that witches live among them; the unattached, nomadic lives of Tuareg & Somali pastoralists; doomsaying sermonsin evangelical sectsin Nigeria; the obscene wealth of dictators & corrupt politicians. He relates each sketch through characters & communities, rather than wildlife, or landscapes, or metaphors of suffering, & this makes his tales richer: we see & hear Africa through Africans' voices & experience.
When I'd finished reading this book I was reminded that Africa is an incredibly demanding country, & that much there seems designed to wear a traveller down: public transport that only leaves when it is full to bursting; irrepressible heat; disease; con men or beggars at every corner; grinding bureaucracy; an unwillingness to repair what's broken. But at the same time I felt that I'd been naive to get annoyed by all these things. Everyday people were suffering much more than I was, yet while I was cursing, smiling faces greeted me everywhere. As Kapusckinski puts it: "their life is endless toil, a torment they endure with astonishing patience & good humour." His message is: get out there, meet & talk to Africans, understand how they see you, do your best to understand what life is like for them. It's a hugely important principle, & I'll have this book with me next time I'm there.
Ali Mazrui - By: Hasani, 08 Jan 2008 
i absolutely loved the book. though there was one hitch:
in the book, Ryzard refers to the intellectual 'Ali Mazrui' as 'Ugandan'. He is not Ugandan. He is Kenyan. To be specific from the Coastal Province of Kenya. I say this because:
1. i'm kenyan
2. i'm from the coast of kenya
... & more importantly
3. i am a distant relative of Ali Mazrui.
If the error can be corrected it would be great!
An Exerllent resource - By: Edrissa Jarju, 08 Dec 2007 Oncein a while you come across a book both entertaining & loaded with useful information. Shadow of the Sun is one them - I found the author's interspersing of narrative with historical commentary very usefulin understanding the present circumstances of many of the places he visited - it puts everything into context. The author has done an excellent & accessible account of his African experiences.
Africa is a big & complex continent as the author even admits & warns of failure at any generalization attempts. He however falls into this trap in some instances. I found some of his attempts at accounting the 'metaphysical African' completely unrecognizable as an African. For examplein one of the chapters, he found himselfin a Nigerian churchin the Delta & goes on to explore African religions. He concludes that they incompatible with Christianity. He observed that Africans do not feel guilt & that to them, as long as a crime or an evil deed is undiscovered, it remains an innocent/normal action. I found that to be completely untrue. How else can one explain the forgiveness of bad thoughtsin the practice of the traditional African religions I am aware, that includes am sure, the area of Nigeria he found himself. There are a few similar instancesin the book, but overall, this author has an extraordinary interaction with Africansin a way most Europeans don't. He is an excellent observer & very detailin his accounts.
This is a great read & I am looking forward to reading more of his books
