In 1975 Kapuscinski flew into Luanda in Angola, to cover the murderous civil war that had broken out after independence. This book is a record of his experiences there, of a city and a country that seemed, for a prolonged period, to have taken leave of the world, to enter a nightmare of anarchy.



'This is a very personal book, about being alone and lost'. In 1975 Kapuscinski's employers sent him to Angola to cover the civil war that had broken out after independence. For months he watched as Luanda and then the rest of the country collapsed into a civil war that was in the author's words 'sloppy, dogged and cruel'. In his account, Kapuscinski demonstrates an extraordinary capacity to describe and to explain the individual meaning of grand political abstractions.