Ebony After the first 2 volumes of the trilogy Dante Oscar Esquivias I wanted to read something different before you went on with the third, said and done, I began with the reading of "Ebony", a book written by journalist ; Ryszard Kapuscinski .
The change is radical, starting because Ebony is not a novel but a series of newspaper in which the author shows Africa, this vast continent impenetrable until the twentieth century, of which little is known because in general do not have a written history .
Kapuscinski in his introduction and warns: "This continent is too large to describe. It is an ocean, a separate planet, a whole cosmos diverse and extraordinarily rich. Just for a convention reductionist, for convenience, we say "Africa." In reality, unless the geographical name, Africa does not exist. "
Kapuscinski travels to Africa in 1957 and lives decolonization firsthand. Avoids the official routes, prefer to mingle with people. It tells us little stories such as the life of the villagers about mango, but the big story, as was the tragedy of Rwanda. pinpoints the details of what happened in countries like Tanzania, Ethiopia Eritrea, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi to name a few countries visited in his tour of Africa.
He explains both the origins of the settlement, dating back to the slave trade, and political processes occurring in the second half of the twentieth century. Recounts the hell of child soldiers in Liberia, the warlords and the suffering of the population but also the hospitality of the people, their material possessions (what if you were told that the house can take only what fits in a plastic bowl?), life in the Sahel (African savanna), the road links (if any) or train or patience that Europeans do not have.
If you read "Ebony" you can reconstruct the mosaic that Kapuscinski visited Africa over 40 years and to detect in its written aims to produce a change in the world, is what is called journalism intentional.
