It describes revolutions and explains their failures in countries such as Zanzibar and Uganda. It brings home the scale of drought and famine in Ethiopia and Liberia. Though the book's scope is vast, Kapuscinski's writing is precise and palpable. The author has at his disposal in notes and memory innumberable scenes and characters that constitute his image of Africa, which he uses to help us see and understand the lives of common people on the continent. Kapuscinski recalls, for example, how he set up house in an African neighborhood on the island of Lagos in 1967.
Someone has a pickax.
The one with a shirt can find a job as a nightwatchman . Others have only their muscles to sell. He learns this by observing a woman who owned nothing but a pot, which she used to cook beans for sale on the street. The entire alleyway stirred. Hunger is a condition of life in every country and every era Kapuscinski explores in Africa.