22 Comments

I have read The Emperor from my parents library (more like a stack of books), I love Kapuściński prose ever since. But apparently there was no Lulu, there is a real monster of a book detailing Kapuściński errors and confabulations: https://www.amazon.com/Ryszard-Kapuscinski-Life-Artur-Domoslawski/dp/1781680817 (In Polish the title is "Kapuściński non-fiction"), and most probably Lulu is one of them :(

I have not yet read that other book - it is too long, and probably quite boring (without any Lulus), but it is said to be well researched.

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Oct 25, 2021Liked by Whimsi

Thanks for the great review. It's good to see how far we've come in regards to corrupt elites and makes me hopeful the trend continues.

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Excellent essay, many thanks!

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Oct 15, 2021Liked by Whimsi

This was a really interesting writeup; thanks for sharing! I'm definitely not an expert on this corner of the world, but I read a really interesting book on the history of Ethiopia's neighbor Eritrea, which touched a bit on Selassie. I did a pretty scattershot review with some highlights here, if that's relevant to your interests: https://queenlua.dreamwidth.org/296941.html

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Oct 14, 2021Liked by Whimsi

"In any case, he is rarely thought of in the same light as the Idi Admins and Robert Mugabes of the world, and after reading this, WWII notwithstanding, I think he probably should be."

Zimbabwe seems to have gotten much worse after Mugabe gained power, whereas Ethiopia got worse after Selassie lost power. So maybe he should be blamed for letting the Derg take over rather than holding onto power better?

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Oct 14, 2021Liked by Whimsi

Brilliant writing. I'm picking up this book.

(Tiny point - when referring to the overall population of a country, it's 'populace', which is confusingly a homophone with the similar-meaning 'populous', that is, many-peopled.)

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Nice! Thank you for an interesting summary as I too had kept the idea of Selassie as a positive stateman (he took power from his uncle, irrc, with some skills).

BTW, spelling for the French philosopher is Rousseau (last paragraph)

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Sep 30, 2021Liked by Whimsi

Fantastic.

(Parallels to modern taxation left as an exercise to the reader. )

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Thank you for the review!

Typos (or not?)

> Idi Admins

> quasi-Rosseuian

> Rosseau

Rousseauian, Rousseau

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