The Soccer War
Page 20
We always carry it to foreign countries, all over the world, our pride and our powerlessness. We know its configuration, but there is no way to make it accessible to others. It will never be right. Something, the most important thing, the most significant thing, something remains unsaid.
Relate one year of my country—it does not matter which one: let us say, 1957. And one month of that year—say, July. And just one day—let us say, the sixth.
No.
Yet that day, that month, that year exist in us, somehow, because we were there, walking that street, or digging coal, or cutting the forest, and if we were walking along that street how can we then describe it (it could be Kraków) so that you can see its movement, its climate, its persistence and changeability, its smell and its hum?
They cannot see it. You cannot see it, anything, the night, Mpango, the thick bush, Ghana, the fire dying out, the elders going off to sleep, the Nana dozing, and snow falling somewhere, and women like blacks, thoughts, ‘They are learning to read, he said something like that,’ thoughts, ‘They had a war, ach, a war, he said, yes, no colonies, that country, Poland, white and they have no colonies,’ thoughts, the bush screams, this strange world.
From
RYSZARD KAPUŚCIŃSKI
Travels with Herodotus
An intimate account of the legendary reporter’s first forays into the world beyond the iron curtain.
Available June 2007 in hardcover from Knopf
$25.00/ $32.00 CAN • 978-1-4000-4338-5
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The Emperor • 978-0-679-72203-8
Imperium • 978-0-679-74780-2
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Shah of Shahs • 978-0-679-73801-5
The Soccer War • 978-0-679-73805-3
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Winner of the Booker Prize
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THE STRANGER
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by Truman Capote
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THE REMAINS OF THE DAY
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THE WOMAN WARRIOR
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THE DECLINE OF A FAMILY
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ALL THE PRETTY HORSES
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THE CEMENT GARDEN
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Winner of the Booker Prize
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OPERATION SHYLOCK
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In this tour de force of fact and fiction, Philip Roth meets a man who may or may not be Philip Roth. Because someone with that name has been touring the State of Israel, promoting a bizarre exodus in reverse, and it is up to Roth to stop him—even if that means impersonating his impersonator.
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