I really enjoyed reading this book, which I understand was the last book he wrote.

It interweaves stories of his own travels as a reporter with stories from - and about - Herodotus.

Kapuscinski meditates on Herodotus method and objectives. He considers how he did his work and the problems of writing history.

He starts with his first trip outside of Poland, which is to India, where ‘I felt trapped. Besieged by language.’ A language, which he points out is ‘“.. a foreign, imposed tongue, which by then had so fully taken root here as it was for me an indispensable key to this country, almost identical with it.”

But the book becomes both his attempt to understand the places he’s in, their cultures and history whilst at the same time trying to understand Herodotus and what made him write what he wrote.

We know little about Herodotus the person so we can only guess at what he was like as a person, although Kapuscinski makes a good effort.

This book is definitely worth a read and, if nothing else, will make you want to read Herodotus himself. I have dipped in and out of Herodotus myself but never sat down and read it properly. This is now one of my tasks going forward.

But this makes for a fascinating read.