Issyvoo

Authors Ryszard Kapuscinski

Mariusz Kubik

I remember well, incidentally, that when the explosion of 1980 finally arrived and the government was obliged to sign the series of revolutionary social agreements with the workers, Mr. Kapuscinski coined a phrase that for a few weeks was on the lips of every official. “In the past, we have learned only from our mistakes. Now we are learning from our experience.” I have brooded on this apothegm ever since, concluding that—especially in a country whose experience consists mostly of its own mistakes and those of other powers—it means nothing whatever.

Tweet this quote Read the full piece at New York Review of Books Neal Ascherson New York Review of Books 1983

Kapuscinski is neither an intellectual nor an evangelist; politics as such is of no interest to him. Using his press accreditation, he has simply spent years insinuating his way into unlikely situations for his own purposes as a writer. Yet there is a fund of sympathy in this dubious character which always earns him the benefit of the doubt.

Tweet this quote Read the full piece at London Review of Books Jeremy Harding London Review of Books 1991