Rhapsodic Non-fiction
Wednesday, September 18th, 2002
Ryszard Kapuscinski and Oliver Sacks discuss
“Rhapsodic Non-fiction”
Both events are held at 7:30 PM in Hemmerdinger Hall, NYU Main Building
100 Washington Sq. East, ground floor
Ryszard Kapuscinski, the renowned Polish
journalist and chronicler, will be a visiting fellow at the New York
Institute for the Humanities at NYU during the first three weeks of
September. In addition to participating in various internal Institute
programs, Kapuscinski will be featured in two public events.
Born in 1932 into conditions of virtually
third-world poverty in the Pinsk region of the former Soviet Union (now
in Belarus), Kapuscinski survived both Stalinist and Nazi rampages to
become the foremost foreign correspondent of the Polish Press Agency
(indeed, at times the entirety of the foreign press office of that
agency). As such he brought remarkable empathy to daily coverage of
dozens of coups d’état, liberation struggles, civil wars and border
struggles throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America from the fifties
onward (in the process he survived several death sentences and
near-death experiences at remote and flaming barricades).
Starting with “The Emperor,” his masterful
account of the downfall of the Ethiopian tyrant Haile Sellasie,
published in Poland in 1978 where it was universally received as an
allegory of the coming fall of communism itself, Kapuscinki compiled an
ever more impressive, evocative, lapidary and nuanced series of
rhapsodic chronicles, revisiting the scenes of some of his most
engulfing reportages, in books like “Shah of Shahs” (Iran), “Another
Day of Life” (Angola), “The Soccer War” (El Salvador, among
other places), and following the downfall
of communism, “Imperium” (the former Soviet Union). His most recent
book, the first volume of a valedictory trilogy, “The Shadow of the
Sun,” summarizes almost a half century’s encounters with Africa (the
other two volumes will deal with Latin America and Asia, respectively).
On Thursday, September 12th , at 7:30 pm,
Kapuscinski will be joined by the South African poet, painter, essayist
(and former longtime political prisoner), Breyten Breytenbach
(“Confessions of an Albino Terrorist” ) for a public conversation
around the theme of “First World/Third World.”
On Wednesday, September 18th, at 7:30pm,
Kapuscinski will be joined by the eminent neurologist and writer Oliver
Sacks for a discussion around the theme of “Rhapsodic Nonfiction”
(which is to say their parallel vocations for two different sorts of
writing: daily reportage and clinical notes which in turn form the
basis, years later, for highly distilled retrospective tales).
Both events will be moderated by the
Institute’s director, writer Lawrence Weschler (“Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet
of Wonder,” “Calamities of Exile,” “A Miracle, A Universe: Settling
Accounts with Torturers”).
The events are free and open to the public.
For more information and press
accreditation please contact Shonna Keogan at the NYU press office at
212.998.6797 or the NYIH at 212.998.2100.
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