The Emperor

By
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Penguin Books Ltd
The Penguin Modern Classics edition of Ryszard Kapuscinski's The
Emperor is translated by William R. Brand and Katarzyna
Mroczkowska-Brand, with an introduction by Neal Ascherton.

After the deposition of Haile Selassie in 1974, which ended the

ancient rule of the Abyssinian monarchy, Ryszard Kapuscinski
travelled to Ethiopia and sought out surviving courtiers to tell their
stories. Here, their eloquent and ironic voices depict the lavish,
corrupt world they had known - from the rituals, hierarchies and
intrigues at court to the vagaries of a ruler who maintained absolute
power over his impoverished people. They describe his inexorable
downfall as the Ethiopian military approach, strange omens appear
in the sky and courtiers vanish, until only the Emperor and his valet
remain in the deserted palace, awaiting their fate. Dramatic and
mesmerising, The Emperor is one of the great works of reportage
and a haunting epitaph on the last moments of a dying regime.

Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932-2007) was born in Pinsk, now in

Belarus. Kapuscinski was the pre-eminent writer among Polish
reporters. His best-known book is a reportage-novel of the decline
of Haile Selassie's anachronistic regime in Ethiopia - The Emperor,
which has been translated into many languages. Shah of Shahs,
about the last Shah of Iran, and Imperium, about the last days of the
Soviet Union, have enjoyed similar success.

If you enjoyed The Emperor, you might like Norman Mailer's The
Fight, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

'Stunning ... a magical eloquence'

John Updike, New Yorker
 '[The Emperor] transcends reportage, becoming a nightmare of
power ... An unforgettable, fiercely comic, and finally
compassionate book'
Salman Rushdie

'Kapuscinski trascends the limitations of journalism and writes with

the narrative power of a Conrad or Kipling or Orwell'
Blake Morrison

Penguin Books Ltd

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