The master of literary reportage reflects on the West's encounters with the
non-European In this distillation of reflections accumulated from a
lifetime of travel, Ryszard Kapuscinski takes a fresh look at the Western
idea of the Other. Looking at this concept through the lens of his own
encounters in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and considering its formative
significance for his own work, Kapuscinski traces how the West has
understood the non-European from classical times to the present day. He
observes how in the twenty-first century we continue to treat the residents
of the Global South as hostile aliens, objects of study rather than full
partners sharing responsibility for the fate of humankind. In our
globalised but increasingly polarised world, Kapuscinski shows how the
Other remains one of the most compelling ideas of our times.