Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuściński

First published:Szachinszach, 1982 (English translation, 1985)

Type of work: Travel writing

Time of work: 1925-1979

Locale: Iran

Principal Personages:

• Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran from 1941-1979
• The Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the Iranian Revolution

Form and Content

Born in 1932 and a graduate of the University of Warsaw in 1952, Ryszard Kapuściński has since pursued a highly successful career in journalism in his native Poland. He was on the staff of Sztandar mlodych (banner of youth) from 1951 to 1958; of Polityka (politics) from 1959 to 1961; and of Kultura (culture), of which he was deputy editor in chief from 1974 to 1981. He has also worked as a free-lance writer: from 1972 to 1974, and again since 1981. Of particular significance for his development as a journalist, however, and as the catalyst for his reputation as a writer outside Poland, was his service with the Polish Press Agency in Africa, Asia, and Latin America between 1962 and 1972, which sowed the seeds of an abiding interest in the Third World and its problems, on which this highly perceptive Polish observer, citizen of a country without traditions of overseas imperialism and a centuries-old victim of Great Power rivalries, has uniquely incisive insights. In his study of the corruption and decrepitude of the government of Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat, published in 1983 in a translation by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand (originally published in Polish as Cesarz in 1978), Kapuściński artfully constructed, through a sequence of commentaries by palace officials and employees, an insider’s picture of the rottenness at the core of the Ethiopian empire. Very different in style was his Another Day of Life, published in English in 1987 by the same team of translators from his Jeszcze dzien zycia, published in Poland in 1976, which was a diary of a visit to Angola during 1975 at the time of Portugal’s transfer of power and at the time of South African and Cuban military intervention.

Shah of Shahs, published in English in 1985 from the Polish Szachinszach of 1982, was the outcome of a visit to Tehran at the time of the establishment of the Islamic Republic, which early in 1979 replaced the despotic rule of Mohammad Reza Shah, who had mounted the throne in 1941. In writing an account of that event, one that would make sense in terms of what he had witnessed and one that would make comprehensible to his readers one of the most dramatic and seemingly least predictable upheavals of the twentieth century, he designed a highly flexible structure which would allow him to balance his personal observations with what he had learned from interviewers and what he knew of the complex historical background to the revolution. In particular, he had to convey to faraway Polish readers the intricate and highly ambiguous nature of traditional Iranian social and political relationships.

This he achieved with extraordinary success by separating his text into three sections of unequal length. The first, “Cards, Faces, Fields of Flowers,” sets the scene in the Tehran hotel where he was staying. The second, which he called “Daguerreotypes,” is a series of brilliant portraits relating to the shah’s life and antecedents, and to the style of life which characterized his rule. This section, in turn, is followed by one titled “The Dead Flame,” which enabled the author to move to front of stage and ruminate on the causes and consequences of what he reckoned to have been “the twenty-seventh revolution I have seen in the Third World.”

Critical Context

In the genre of travel literature, there are those writers who give to the reader what Lawrence Durrell has called “the spirit of place”; among such are the classics, the works of Alexander Kinglake, Charles Doughty, Freya Stark. Others seek to use their wanderings as a vehicle for social and political commentary, and in most cases, such works, even when they achieve an immediate success, enjoy only an ephemeral reputation. To this generalization, Kapuściński is likely to prove an exception. One clue to his uniqueness is to be found in a statement printed in an issue of Contemporary Authors:

. . . I think that because the social and political structures of unstable third world countries are not quite so sophisticated as those of the developed world, one can more easily observe man and his behaviour in those countries. It is easier to observe the essence of modern conflicts, their generation. The field of observation is sharper, more focused.

In Shah of Shahs, he has provided a brilliant and evocative portrait of Iran in revolution such as is unlikely to fade much with the passage of time. The Iranian Revolution inspired an enormous literature, yet leaving aside the academic monographs and the fascinating (although often self-serving) memoirs by participants, the sheer complexity and subtlety of the context eluded the visiting journalist, whose quest for instant information within an unfamiliar historical setting frequently kept him oscillating between the bizarre and the commonplace. Somehow, Kapuściński avoided both these hazards and wrote in Shah of Shahs a minor classic of travel and of informed observation which may well take its place alongside the classic works on Iran by European travelers.

Bibliography

Ajami, Fouad. Review in The New Republic. CXCII (April 8, 1985), p. 36.

Booklist. LXXXI, March 1, 1985, p. 922.

Fox, Edward. Review in Nation. CCXL (June 22, 1985), p. 772.

Kaufman, Michael T. “Autocrats He Has Known,” in The New York Times. CXXXVI (Feburary 15, 1987), p. 12.

Kennedy, Moorhead. Review in The New York Times Book Review. XC (April 7, 1985), p. 7.

Leonard, Louise. Review in Library Journal. CX (March 15, 1985), p. 52.

Library Journal. CX, March 15, 1985, p. 52.

The London Review of Books. VII, July 4, 1985, p. 22.

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Lyons, Gene. Review in Newsweek. CV (March 4, 1985), p. 66.

Massing, Michael T. “Snap Books: Big Writers and Little Countries,” in The New Republic. CXCVI (May 4, 1987), p. 21.

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