The Soccer War

Part diary and part reportage, The Soccer War is a remarkable chronicle of war in the late twentieth century. Between 1958 and 1980, working primarily for the Polish Press Agency, Kapuscinski covered twenty-seven revolutions and coups in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Here, with characteristic cogency and emotional immediacy, he recounts the stories behind his official press dispatches—searing firsthand accounts of the frightening, grotesque, and comically absurd aspects of life during war. The Soccer War is a singular work of journalism.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Journalism at its most incisive, these phosphorescent dispatches from the front investigate Third World wars of 1958-1976, probing the forces of political repression and societies stagnating or in the throes of change. Like a contemporary Conrad footloose in Africa, Polish reporter Kapuscinski ( Shah of Shahs ) evokes a continent coping with a colonialist legacy, torn between dictatorships, anarchy and struggles for liberation. He writes of the murder of Congo prime minister Patrice Lumumba, the mid-1960s Nigerian civil war which devastated the Yorubas, and Algeria's struggle to emerge from France's shadow. Drawing on his five-year stint in Latin America, he discusses torture in Guatemala and the 100-hour war between Honduras and El Salvador, triggered by a soccer contest in 1969, which left 6000 dead and many villages destroyed. More recent pieces in this powerful, impressive memoir deal with Turkey's invasion of northern Cyprus, Palestinian guerrillas and the internecine 1976 border dispute between Ethiopia and Somalia.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Being a foreign correspondent is not a job but a way of life; as Kapuscinski reveals in his latest book, that includes almost being burned to death and facing a firing squad. Unlike his popular The Emperor ( LJ 12/15/82) and Shah of Shahs ( LJ 3/15/85), he presents here the personal stories behind his press releases. Though the title refers to the 100-hour war between El Salvador and Honduras over a soccer match that left 6000 dead and 12,000 wounded, Kapuscinski's reminiscences range from 1958 to 1976 when he covered 27 revolts worldwide. He concludes that the immobility of the masses in the Third World is so problematic that even good leaders begin to confuse power with wisdom and thus lose the ability to distinguish politics from morality, or to work for the common good instead of themselves. Despite some interesting ideas and descriptions of terrifying experiences, Kapuscinski's account really adds little to the reader's knowledge. Public libraries only should consider.
- Louise Leonard, Univ. of Florida Libs., Gainesville
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.