Ryszard Kapuściński: A Life by Artur Domosławski first appeared in Poland two years after Kapuściński’s death in 2007, where it was greeted with great controversy. From the start we understand that Kapuściński was Domosławski’s professional hero. The biographer, a Polish journalist some decades younger than his subject, wants to know the story behind the man, to prove that he is or is not the hero he wanted him to be. In his introduction he confides in us: “I’m still looking for a tone for my account, trying to devise its architecture” (p. 3). His chosen architecture is a mixture of lines and circles, chronology and question, speculation and theories. His own statements about his struggles — and there are many throughout the book — suggest that the reader is accompanying him on a voyage of discovery — that we are his accomplice in this search for the truth behind the legend. When we start the book we are to believe that we, like the author, do not yet know who this man really was. When all the interviews are completed, all the documents reviewed and all the allegations presented, we along with the author will discover the truth. Instead of evaluating Domosławski’s version of Polish political history, let me report a few surprising things I have learned from the book:

Kapuściński’s dispatches from various locations in Africa and Latin America were first circulated to a selected audience in the Polish government and then released for publication. This is because everyone working in publishing was working for the Polish government. Kapuściński marked some of his dispatches “not for publication” because they were openly critical of the local situation at the time. Such dispatches were meant to go no farther than the desks of government officials and those who needed to know. On two occasions some government official screwed up and a “not for publication” story appeared in the newspapers. Both of these indiscretions caused Kapuściński to be deported, the first time from Kenya and the second time from Chile.

All the evidence Domosławski gathers from his numerous interviews points to one thing: Kapuściński spent his life listening to people talk about their lives. He filed his news stories and he transformed those conversations into brilliant books.

The book about Halie Selassie can also be read as a book about Edward Gierek’s government in Poland. When I read The Emperor, Kapuściński’s account of the final years of the Emperor of Ethiopia described by unnamed employees in the palace, I had no idea the Polish readers of each installment appearing in the magazine Kultura saw it as a political satire of their own government. The hidden meaning of the book was such general knowledge that it was turned into a stage play in Warsaw to further embarrass government officials attending the performances.

The popularity of The Emperor in Poland led to Kapuściński’s introduction to the English-speaking world. Domosławski recounts how Katarzyna Mroczkowska, a Polish graduate student, brought the book back from Warsaw on her return to the University of Rochester, where her husband, William Brand, decided to translate it into English. Brand sent it to Helen Wolff, the American editor of many great contemporary European writers. Wolff arranged for it to be published in the United States in 1983, during the period of Martial Law in Poland.

Domosławski discovered the English edition of Shah of Shahs, Kapuściński’s account of the Iranian revolution, omits passages that appeared in the original Polish edition about the US involvement in creating the Shah’s regime. When Domosławski interviewed the American translator and publisher, they were not aware of this omission. Domosławski concludes that the sixteen missing pages must have been removed by Kapuściński when he sent his translator the manuscript for what was to become his second American publication.

Christ With a Rifle on His Shoulder, the book which includes Kapuściński’s writing about Allende and Guevara, has appeared in Spanish but has never been translated into English.

Kapuściński never met Che Guevara, Salvador Allende or Patrice Lumumba. He arrived in the Congo shortly after Lumumba was killed, a fact that can be deduced from the chapter about the first Congolese civil war published in The Soccer War. Kapuściński arrived in Bolivia shortly after Guevara’s death, and was deported from Chile without meeting Allende. Domosławski quotes the American journalist John Lee Anderson’s story about a London meeting with Kapuściński in the 1990s. Anderson explained he was working on a biography of Guevara, then asked Kapuściński: ”Tell me about Che.’ ‘Oh, that’s a publisher’s error,’ replied Kapuściński” (p. 181). Domosławski does not identify the publicist who wrote the sentence repeated in each English edition, but he finds no evidence that Kapuściński ever asked for it to be corrected.

Kapuściński was a great listener. His manner and smile seduced people into talking about their lives. His interlocators received great satisfaction from being listened to and he was careful not to tell anyone what he thought while he was listening.

The truth that Domosławski finds is made up of such details. So much of what people thought about Kapuściński are projections based on misconceptions. Should one be shocked by this? He clearly knew how little others knew about where he actually had been and what he actually had done. His readers outside of Poland had no idea what life inside of Poland was like and his readers inside of Poland had no idea what life was like in the places he wrote about.

These legends were a part of the armor Kapuściński used to defend himself in a hostile world, where the opinion of a Polish party official, the whim of a Nigerian soldier or Chilean policeman, and later a hostile article in the New York Review of Books, not to mention the bite of a mosquito or the sting of a scorpion could mean the end to the life he wanted to make for himself.

Exactly what motivated Kapuściński to fight for and win this freedom to travel outside Poland? Here Domosławski provides the most profound speculation of the book. Having participated in the creation of the Polish socialist state (the author consistently uses the word socialist where an American would use the word communist), Stalinism and the disappointments of de-Stalinization in 1956, he proposes that Kapuściński sought to experience the struggle for revolution outside his homeland, in Africa and in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. During those months and years spent outside, he sought out conflicts that few people in the Cold War bubble cared about. What did he do with this freedom to travel? All the evidence Domosławski gathers from his numerous interviews points to one thing: Kapuściński spent his life listening to people talk about their lives. He filed his news stories and he transformed those conversations into brilliant books.