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Vanquished in the field of arms, Armenia seeks salvation in the scriptoria... These must have been enormous collections: in 1170 the Seljuks destroy a library in Syunik consisting of ten thousand volumes... At first they wrote on skins, then on paper. They once made a book that weighed thirty-two kilograms. Seven hundred calves went into it... Golden armies of small Armenian letters crawl over hundreds of pages... The fate of these books is the history of the Armenians.
In the current intense environment, Kapuściński’s Shah of Shahs (1982) is extremely pertinent and ought to be compulsory reading in some quarters.
Being a glutton for punishment and a lover of vast canvases, Kapuściński set himself the daunting task of describing the lead-up to, and outcome of, the Iranian revolution in 1979.
Apart from providing a broad and enlightening backdrop for the genesis of the Iran's Islamic Republic, this book also demonstrates how a mind can navigate its way through overwhelming events and material to arrive at a degree of robust, condensed clarity: it is done by bothering to listen carefully, by slow absorption and pausing for thought, by a laborious writing process involving ruthless chiselling; not by thoughtless clicking, sloppy scanning and semi-automated copying and pasting.
Shah of Shahs is a rare breed of book: despite being about hugely controversial characters and events, Kapuściński manages to avoid the vicious polarities which are part and parcel of divisive 'us or them' politics; it does not seek to convince us or force an agenda down our throat.
Continue reading "Ryszard Kapuscinski’s ‘Shah of Shahs’ (Szachinszach)" »
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 design by maciej sierpien & krzysztof bartkowski |
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