ABSTRACT
Ryszard Kapuscinski’s strategy is to relinquish the authoritative narrative vantage point traditionally occupied by a Western traveler and to offer, instead of one’s own narration as the dominant voice, a polyphonic group of “other” voices in a dialogue with the narrator. One of Kapuscinski’s concerns in his books is the descent of language as a result of one linguistically powerful social group dominating the language of a less powerful group. In Kapuscinski’s delicate position, one might desperately wish for the security of one dominant language and for all the stability that power assures. Parodic discourse is more evident in Kapuscinski’s Another Day of Life where he is caught in the midst of a confusing guerrilla conflict over control of Angola. In Kapuscinski’s account of the readying of the same city for a meeting of African kings 30 years later, he is more interested in the gap between the powerful and the powerless.
