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SUMMARY:Reportage V: Ryszard Kapuściński with David Samuels
UID:https://instytutpolski.pl/newyork/2026/08/26/reportage-v-ryszard-kapuscinski-with-david-samuels/
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DESCRIPTION:S6E9 and all video recordings are available on our YouTube.
Encounters with Polish and Ukrainian Literature is a video series for
anyone interested in literature and the culture of books and reading. Each
month, host David A. Goldfarb will present a new topic in conversation with
an expert on that author or book or movement in Polish literature. More
about the Encounters with Polish and Ukrainian Literature series and the
timeline.
Ryszard Kapuściński (1932-2007), was born in Pinsk, today part of
Belarus, survived the Second World War as a child, died in Warsaw, and in
between traveled extensively as a journalist throughout Africa, Asia, the
Soviet Union, the Middle East, and South America. Kapuściński shaped the
postwar future of reportage in Poland and around the world through his use
of allegory, irony, absurdist humor, mały realizm or the use of minor
figures to illustrate larger issues, his crafting of characters who speak
in their own voices on the basis of interviews, and through the sheer
poetry of his language. He tried to remove explicit references to himself
from the narrative as much as possible, using objectivity and his
subjects’ voices as a shield from censorship, and wrote about power
relations in his own country indirectly through people on the fringes of
power in other countries, but the combined effect of these literary
techniques created a unique style that is persuasive, universal, and
immediately identifiable as Kapuściński.
In this episode we talk with American longform journalist, David Samuels,
about some of the ways that Ryszard Kapuściński influenced his own
writing and the writing of other journalists in the U.S., especially in the
era of the “New Journalism” or creative non-fiction. We try to
understand the lasting universal appeal beyond the immediate news value of
Kapuściński’s accounts of now long dead empires that may have once been
allegorical critiques of another long dead empire, and we try to uncover
some of what they reveal about political power and how it works.
Ryszard Kapuściński in English translation and recommended resources:
Domosławski, Artur. Ryszard Kapuściński: A Life. Tr. Antonia
Lloyd-Jones. New York: Verso, 2012. 
Kapuściński, Ryszard.  All works published in English by Random House. 
David Samuels has had a long career as a staff and contract writer for The
New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The
Point, and other magazines, on subjects including dog tracks, music
festivals, blimp pilots, serial impostors, jewel thieves, pigeon racing,
and the art of bringing down large buildings with explosives. Most recently
he is editor and co-founder of County Highway, a broadsheet print newspaper
featuring longform journalism.
David A. Goldfarb, Host & ProducerBartek Remisko, Curator and Executive
ProducerNatalia Iyudin, Produce
Image:
Kapuściński, photo 1992 © Narodowe Archiwum CyfroweBartoszewski,
Samuels, Barszczewska-interp © Władysław Bartoszewski, Beata
Barszczewska (interpreter), and David Samuels, photo by David A. Goldfarb,
2013
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