Imperium

Ryszard Kapuściński was a Polish-born journalist who had a gift for turning reportage into poetry. That sounds pretentious, and if it is then that’s my fault. Not his. Consider this description of the cities of Bukhara and Samarkand in Uzbekistan.

Bukhara is commercial, noisy, concrete, and material; it is a city of merchandise and marketplaces; it is an enormous warehouse, a desert port, Asia’s belly. Samarkand is inspired, abstract, lofty and beautiful; it is a city of concentration and reflection; it is a musical note and a painting; it is turned towards the stars.

Imperium is a study of the Soviet Union before – and briefly after; the book was published in 1993 – its collapse and break-up. It’s a study of its people, its landscapes, of fear, stagnation, oppression and soul-crushing bureaucracy. It’s a description of how ordinary people go about daily life in such circumstances, and of how powerful people wreak havoc on history and nature with their dreams of progress and national glory. (The 1931 destruction of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and the drying of Aral Sea in the 1960s.)

It's not a happy book, or a particularly hopeful one. But it is absolutely enthralling. And quite beautifully written.