Ryszard Kapuscinski
Ryszard Kapuściński (Polish: [ˈrɨʂart kapuɕˈt ɕiɲski] ( listen); March 4, 1932 – January 23, 2007) was a Polish reporter, journalist, traveller, photographer, poet and writer whose dispatches in book form brought him a global reputation. Widely considered a serious candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature during his lifetime, he is one of the top Polish writers most frequently translated into foreign languages. In an obituary published in Der Spiegel, Kapuściński was described by German journalist Claus Christian Malzahn as "one of the most credible journalists the world has ever seen". Daniel Alarcón, the Peruvian-American novelist cited Kapuściński as a formative influence together with Dostoyevsky. The American journalist and reportage-writer Richard Bernstein, saw value in the "penetrating intelligence" of Kapuściński's vision and in his "crystallised descriptive" style of writing. The British journalist Bill Deedes, who had witnessed the Rwandan Genocide first-hand, said of Kapuściński that what he "writes about Africa is authoritative as well as captivating. His account of how the Hutus and the Tutsis were drawn into that dark night of genocide in Rwanda is the most enlightening I have read anywhere" – even while, at the same time, proclaiming that it was Kapuściński who had "transformed journalism into literature in his writings about Africa". Professor Philip Melling of Swansea University concurred with this opinion, citing Kapuściński as an authority on the Rwandan conflict.