Word: domoslawski
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...fresh questions have emerged about whether the journalist's works were based more in fiction than in fact, causing a firestorm in Poland, where Kapuscinski is considered a national hero. In a new 600-page biography titled Kapuscinski Non-Fiction, the Polish journalist Artur Domoslawski says Kapuscinski repeatedly crossed the boundary between reporting and fiction writing during his career, claiming to have witnessed events where he hadn't actually been present and inventing images to heighten the dramatic effect of his stories. (See the top 10 fiction books...
...instance, Domoslawski writes that Kapuscinski never actually met Guevara or Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese freedom fighter who became the Democratic Republic of Congo's first Prime Minister in 1960. He also says Kapuscinski never received an 11th-hour reprieve from a firing squad in Congo in the 1960s and that his father had never been a Soviet prisoner of war, as Kapuscinski had claimed. In addition, Domoslawski, a journalist at Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's largest paper, claims that Kapuscinski served as a spy for the communists in his travels around the world, noting that it was nearly impossible to leave...
...Domoslawski's book has been widely condemned in Poland, in part because of Kapuscinski's nearly godlike status in the country but also because Kapuscinski had been Domoslawski's mentor and close friend. Kapuscinski's widow Alicja, who unsuccessfully sought a court order to block the publication of the book, likened Domoslawski's work to patricide. "He wanted to precipitate the removal from the pedestal of the one who promoted him, valued him, encouraged him and recommended him," she said in an interview with the newspaper Polska the Times. "Such things should be published several dozen years after the death...
...Others have been more blunt in their criticism of the book. Former Polish Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski has compared the biography's publishers to "purveyors of brothel guides." Polish author Tomasz Lubienski says Domoslawski crossed a line when he decided to publicly challenge the reputation of his mentor. "Domoslawski was not a good disciple of Kapuscinski, who was a refined man," Lubienski wrote in Gazeta Wyborcza. "[His book is] about the private life of the man who wrote The Emperor. That's unnecessary and it pushes the book into the gutter." Says another writer, Andrzej Stasiuk, in defense of Kapuscinski...
...Domoslawski maintains that he didn't set out to destroy a man he still considers to be a great writer. In fact, he said in an interview with Polska the Times, he wrote the book with "empathy" for his old friend. "He has been a myth and an icon," the biographer said. "Perhaps now we will look at him as a human being in his all complexity." And some commentators outside Poland have praised Domoslawski's work for its honest portrayal of the man. "I find that the author tries to be fair, allowing many different voices to speak," British...
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