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The Soccer War

Ryszard Kapuściński

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Aug 19, 2017 Adam McPhee rated it liked it

Shelves: history, memoir, journalism, far-corners, south-america, africa

Stories from a renowned Polish journalist who saw Africa in the sixties: Lumumba's Congo, a coup in newly independent Algeria, the Nigerian civil war, Ethiopian-Somali war and famine, parliamentary debate on a child support bill in Tanganyika (now Tanzania). Plus Israel-Palestine, Cyprus, and the eponymous Soccer War between Honduras and El Salvador, which kicked off because of soccer tensions and lasted one hundred hours, left 6,000 dead, and was missed by the world media who were focused on th Stories from a renowned Polish journalist who saw Africa in the sixties: Lumumba's Congo, a coup in newly independent Algeria, the Nigerian civil war, Ethiopian-Somali war and famine, parliamentary debate on a child support bill in Tanganyika (now Tanzania). Plus Israel-Palestine, Cyprus, and the eponymous Soccer War between Honduras and El Salvador, which kicked off because of soccer tensions and lasted one hundred hours, left 6,000 dead, and was missed by the world media who were focused on the moon landing.

His best anecdotes are about roadblocks in Nigeria, a Honduran soldier who risks his life to strip boots from the dead for his barefoot family, witnessing an execution on television, being asked to start a socialist party in the Congo, trying to convince Ghanians that Poland, albeit a country full of white people, was the colonized and not the colonizer, and being held prisoner in Burundi and being saved by a Congolese who got a message to the U.N.

Ben Bella's coup paranoia: (view spoiler)

Socialism in the Congo: (view spoiler)

Stumbling upon a coup: (view spoiler)

Predicting a war: (view spoiler)

Soccer and politics: (view spoiler)

Canadian journalism and diplomacy in Latin America: (view spoiler)

A foreign correspondent's life: (view spoiler)

The Cypriot Rabbit of Seville (view spoiler)

Drought in Ogaden: (view spoiler) ...more

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