The Other
by Ryszard Kapuscinski
List Price:
Our Price: $10.35
You Save: $6.60 (39%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $4.51 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Ryszard KapuscinskiTranslator: Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Introduction: Neal Ascherson
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-10-17
ISBN: 1844673286
Number of pages: 100
Publisher: Verso
Book Reviews of The Other
Book Review: A profound little book
Summary: 5 Stars
I wrote stone
I wrote house
I wrote town
I shattered the stone
I demolished the house
I obliterated the town
the page traces the struggles
between creation
and annihilation
This is one of the poems that came out of Kapuscinski's life experiences as a journalist writing of war and revolution, of death and carnage. I'll return to this poem a little later.
Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski died of a quick cancer in January 2007. "The Other," a book published posthumously in 2008, is such a powerful tribute and respectful salute to a man who speaks almost poetically toward people he moved amongst for over half of his career--people he poignantly called the Other.
What constitutes the Other? First, what does not? If you spoke English or any other European language as a native language in the 1800s, you most likely were white and of the West. Everyone else was the Other. Two things in his life made him very aware of his initial viewpoint: his reading of Herodotus and his own book, "Travels with Herodotus (Vintage International), translated into English in 2007, and his choice to live in and report the events of the Global South: Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In fact, Kapuscinski reports, "80% of the world is non-white" (56).
His own thoughts reflect those of his favorite philosophers, who were dialogists: Emmanuel Levinas and Josef Tischner. Here is a simple summary of the three reactions to Others: start war with them, isolate your culture from them, or begin a dialogue. One expanded version was to consider the Other as God in the form of a visitor. How would you treat him? This is the culture of Hospitality as a form of dialogue.
Kapuscinski's most admired anthropologist was Bronislaw Malinowski, who did not just study a group of people: he lived among them, often at great personal sacrifice and anguish. But it was Malinowski who showed that living as the Other himself was much more conducive to creating an open environment. Short of living in another culture to learn to understand it,
one can travel (a short shrift but an effort) and by reading works of writers of other cultures.
This little book (92 pages, plus Index) seemed repetitive and disjointed at times during my reading. However, the four lectures that comprise it were delivered over a period of five years in Vienna and Krakow. It was on the second reading that things came together for me. As a result, I highly recommend this book if you are interested in furthering a Global Village.
Kapuscinski's poem? The translators say that he could write about those things, then with a keystroke, delete them. That governments can "delete" whole villages, whole cultures with a bomb. What about attitudes? If we continue to treat people as Others, as inferiors, are we mentally "deleting?" Perhaps that is why the world is joyfully embracing President-Elect Barack Obama. The Other is Us.
World Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in World Books
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern Warby Mark Bowden
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2000-03-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.75
Price in other shops:
Denying the Holocaustby Deborah Lipstadt
Penguin Books; Published: 1995-03-02; Paperback; Book
Western Europe in the Middle Ages 300-1475by Brian Tierney, Sidney Painter
McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages; Published: 1998-08-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $106.52
Corrections in the 21st Centuryby Frank Schmalleger, John Ortiz Smykla
McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages; Published: 2006-03-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $18.70
Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Mattersby Chesley B. Sullenberger, Jeffrey Zaslow
William Morrow; Published: 2009-10-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops:
Modern Times Revised Edition: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties (Perennial Classics)by Paul Johnson
Harper Collins Publishers; Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2001-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.00
Price in other shops:
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocideby Samantha Power
Harper Perennial; Published: 2003-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.97
Price in other shops:
1421: The Year China Discovered Americaby Gavin Menzies
Harper Perennial; Published: 2004-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops:
"The Good Old Days"by Willi Dressen, Volker Riess
Free Press; Published: 1991-10-21; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $8.10
Price in other shops:
Wild Swansby Jung Chang
Harpercollins Audio; Published: 2004-06-07; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $15.86
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Travels with Herodotusby Ryszard Kapuscinski
Knopf; Published: 2007-06-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.99
Price in other shops:
Imperiumby Ryszard Kapuscinski
Knopf; Published: 1994-09-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $74.00
The Emperorby Ryszard Kapuscinski
Vintage; Published: 1989-03-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.89
Price in other shops:
The Soccer Warby Ryszard Kapuscinski
Vintage; Published: 1992-02-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
Like Eating a Stone: Surviving the Past in Bosniaby Wojciech Tochman
Atlas; Published: 2008-09-17; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $1.99
Price in other shops:
Travels with Herodotus (Vintage International)by Ryszard Kapuscinski
Vintage; Published: 2008-06-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.97
Price in other shops:
Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (Issues of Our Time)by Kwame Anthony Appiah
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2007-02-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.25
Price in other shops:
Shah of Shahsby Ryszard Kapuscinski
Vintage; Published: 1992-02-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.52
Price in other shops:
Another Day of Lifeby Ryszard Kapuscinski
Vintage; Published: 2001-04-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.53
Price in other shops:
The Shadow of the Sunby Ryszard Kapuscinski
Vintage; Published: 2002-04-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.92
Price in other shops: