The Other by Ryszard Kapuscinski

This slim catalogue of pieties—a deontology, the French would call it—will come as a surprise to admirers of Ryszard Kapuscinski’s taut and vivid accounts of some of the globe’s major wars, coups and revolutions of the last forty years. The Other is a collection of three lectures delivered four years ago at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna, rounded off with three addresses, all on the subject of what is rebarbatively called in academic circles “alterity”. Except for one short address, “My Other” (1990), the entire book dates from the time when he was working on his last major work, Travels with Herodotus, itself a rather mellow and reflective book on his life as a conscientious reporter. Herodotus, it ought to be remembered, although the “father of history”, was also accused in his day of being a terrible fibber.

As Neal Ascherson remarks in his generous introduction, as journalists get older they tend to reflect more on the perspective they have…