In the spotlight: Ryszard Kapuściński

Along with Stanisław Lem, who passed away early last year, Kapuściński was one of Poland's most renowned writers.

Ryszard Kapuściński was born in 1932 in Pińsk (in present day Belarus) where his parents worked as teachers. He graduated from Warsaw University with a degree in history, a background that didn't hurt when he began his career as a journalist in the early 1950s. Kapuściński first reported for Sztandar Młodych, where he gained renown for an article on the harsh reality of life in the socialist model factory-community Nowa Huta. Falling into disfavor with the regime for this and other stories, he wrote under a pseudonym for many years.

Later Kapuściński went to work for the weekly Polityka, before becoming the Polish Press Agency's only foreign correspondent. The numerous political upheavals he experienced during his spell as a correspondent in Africa, Asia and Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s made a lasting impression and were employed, in many of his books, to depict the end of the European colonial empires.

Kapuściński's most famous publications include The Emperor (on the downfall of Ethiopia's Haile Selassie I), Shah of Shahs (on Iran's Islamic revolution), The Soccer War (about Central America) and The Shadow of the Sun (which includes stories from different regions in Africa). He passed away on January 23, 2007.