It’s cold out there today. Two am found me coming down the stairs to find that the wind had blown open the front door and snow was collecting en masse on the carpet. It was then that I knew that today I must write about Ryzard Kapuscinski and his sink-the-battleship-of-our-preconcieved-ideas-of-what-people-are-capable-of book called Imperium. Imperium deals specifically in the effects of war and struggle from both a journalistic and artistic standpoint. RK is technically a journalist but not in your typical way. RK toed a very fine line of putting passion and caring into his writing but also keeping in with his journalistic integrity. This goes for all of his books which are fantastic. (There is one of his books that I have not read because it has only recently been translated into English. It’s called I Wrote Stone and is a collection of his poetry. I can’t imagine what kind of poetry comes out of a guy like RK but I can’t wait to read it.) RK was born in Poland in 1932 and was around to see the day to day atrocities that occurred in that area at that time. The book is divided into three parts. The first deals with his growing up in Poland during that time and the surreal and difficult to read about hardships he and everyone else had to deal with. The second part is about the fall of the Soviet Union and it’s effect on the people there and the world at large. The third part is the smallest part which might be my favorite piece of writing from him. It’s a sum up of what he thinks about what he went through and more importantly what he sees in the future. I don’t know if anyone reads this. I don’t know if anyone has actually picked up a book from a recommendation on The Territory, but if you can, I promise you that this guy will not let you down.

“Our salvation is in striving to achieve what we know we’ll never achieve.”