'Only with the greatest of simplifications for the sake of convenience can we say Africa. In
reality except as a geographical term Africa doesn't exist'. Ryszard Kapuscinski has been
writing about the people of Africa throughout his career. In astudy that avoids the official
routes palaces and big politics he sets out to create an account of post-colonial Africa seen
at once as a whole and as a location that wholly defies generalised explanations. It is both a
sustained meditation on themosaic of peoples and practises we call 'Africa' and an impassioned
attempt to come to terms with humanity itself as it struggles to escape from foreign domination
from the intoxications of freedom from war and from politics as theft.
