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This book is an attempt to diagnose the condition of (post-)modern comparative literature and to formulate its role in the media society in a multicultural world. Andrzej Hejmej reviews the current situation of an “indiscipline” in the widest possible perspective, taking into account both the first concepts from the nineteenth century, including proposals from the French comparative literary scholars, Goethe's idea of Weltliteratur, and the institutional work of H. Von Meltzl, as well as the latest concepts from the comparative literary scholars from Western Europe and the U.S.The history of the formation of the main trends of comparative literary studies is explained through the use of metaphors: the Eiffel Tower, the World Trade Center, and the Tower of Babel. Tackling a variety of proposals from comparative literature scholars as well as proposals from researchers into intermedial and intercultural phenomena leads us to a new look at comparative literature and comparative literary studies. As a result, Hejmej understands modern comparative literature not so much as a further extension of the institutional dimension but more as an interpretative practice embedded in everyday life. This intercultural perspective opens new horizons for comparative literary studies in the twenty-first century.

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An award-winning writer and a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, Ryszard Kapuściński (1932–2007) was a celebrated Polish journalist and author. Praised for the lengths to which he would go to get a story, Kapuściński gained an extraordinary knowledge of the major global events of the second half of the twentieth century and shared it with his diverse audience.The first posthumous monograph on the writer’s life and work, Ryszard Kapuściński confronts the mixed reception of Kapuściński’s tendency to merge the conventions of reportage with the artistry of literature. Beata Nowacka and Zygmunt Ziątek discuss the writer’s accounts of the decolonization of Africa and his work in Asia and South America between 1956 and 1981, a period during which Kapuściński reported on twenty-seven revolutions and coups. They argue that the journalistic tradition is not in conflict with Kapuściński’s meditations on the deep meanings of these events, and that his first-person involvement in his text was not an indulgence detracting from his journalistic adventures but a well-thought-out conception of eyewitness testimony, developing the moral and philosophical message of the stories. Exploring the whole of Kapuściński’s achievements, Nowacka and Ziątek identify a constant tension between a strictly journalistic position and what in Poland is called literary reportage, located on the border between journalism and artistic prose. Kapuściński’s desire and dedication to make more of journalistic writing is the driving force behind the excellence and readability that have made his legendary books so controversial – and so widely celebrated.

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