The Other

The master of literary reportage reflects on the West's encounters with the non-European throughout the ages.

The Washington Post - Francine Prose

Lucidly translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones…Kapuscinski emphasizes the necessity of dialogue and cooperation, and he writes beautifully about those rare historical moments when people from different backgrounds "exchanged thoughts, ideas and goods, traded and did business, made alliances and unions, found common aims and values. The different, other person ceased to be a synonym for a stranger and an enemy, a threat or a deadly evil. Each person discovered in himself at least a small particle of that Other, believed in it and lived in this conviction."

Born in Pinsk (in what is now Belarus), the celebrated Polish foreign correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski is the author of, among other titles, Shah of Shahs, Imperium, Shadow of the Sun, The Other and the memoir Travels with Herodotus. His books have been translated into twenty-eight languages. He died in 2007.