Another Day of Life is one of the finest books about modern Angola and has a deserved reputation as a classic of modern war reportage. Kapuchinski was famed as the Polish Press Agency’s foreign correspondent and he travelled the world in the the 60’s and 70’s reporting on revolution and independence struggles in the Developing World. His eyewitness account of the coming of Angolan independence is one of his best works. The book, from the evacuation of the Portuguese, to the South African invasion and the beginnings of the Angolan civil war crackles with verisimilitude, and is rendered with a remarkable, almost poetic, elegance of language. 

He captures beautifully the city of Luanda and the surreality of its emptying of settlers in the face of decolonisation, the terror of road convoys through bloodily contested countryside, and ordinary rhythms of life that go on in the midst of cataclysm.

It is an extraordinary work of journalism, gripping as a thriller and moving as a tragedy. Beautiful.