Rating: 
Summary: Excellent work
Review: Great work with very vivid descriptions of the Haile Sellasie's times and downfall.Can be enjoyed by readers with little or no familiarity with Ethiopia just as well as those who are well versed with Ethiopian history.
Rating:
Summary: In the Tradition of Swift.
Review: I hate to write anything negative about this book because it is so highly original. The approach, that of relying upon interviews with former palace insiders, would be incredibly effective were it not for the fact that the author decided to embellish their descriptions. Had he not done so, this would be one of the all-time great descriptions of autocratic excess.Still, this description of life within the Ethiopian royal palace during the last days of the reign of Hailie Selassie (a hero in the West because of his successful opposition to the Italian invasion preceding World War II) provides a fine description of the sycophants, bullies, and idiots who hang around to lick up the slops as a totalitarian regime enters its final days. Well worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the best
Review: I really like Ryszard Kapuscinski's work. I loved reading the Soccer War, and Another Day of Life was amazing, but this book doesn't read so well. It's definetly fascinating to read about the downfall of H.S. but the book fails to have a strong momentum to it.
Rating:
Summary: The secret is out
Review: Kapuscinski is one of the best at this type of writing...and perhaps THE best writer on Africa in general. The Emperor is easy to read and will not bog you down with page after page of boring political details. This is my favorite Kapuscinski book. The style is totally unique and the people of Ethopia will owe the author a debt of gratitude for recording the history held within. For example.....the author found and interviewed the only person (his butler/servant) to be with the Emperor during the last weeks of his reign. He found the servant in hiding and he must have been very old. Through a series of interviews with the palace staff....the writer paints a complete picture of what the Emporer was like and what it was like for the dignitaries and servants that had to compete for his favor. I didn't realize the quality of what I had read until I completed the book and then I continued to reflect on it for weeks. I wish I could give the book 6 stars.
Rating:
Summary: a great book!
Review: Kapuscinski's book gives the genuine feeling of the author's knowledge, sensitivity for truth and objectivity in showing the subject. It is a very special and very moving book. Kapuscinsk's writing leaves the reader with a great appreciation for his talent to bring such special understanding for that part of world that is somehow not so much known. His book is one of the best I have read recently.
Rating:
Summary: Truth is stranger (and better) than fiction.
Review: Reading this nonfiction account of Haile Selassie's long goodbye, the reader soon shares the sentiments expressed in the book by some Ethiopian students, "My God, how can anything like this exist?" Kapuscinski's assembled witnesses tell tales of a bizarre and surreal empire no writer of fiction could ever imagine. This book is filled with memorable and evocative passages - scenes of rag-clad beggars fighting for scraps from the opulent banquet going on just feet away; of once-dignified and imperious courtiers squabbling over blankets as they wait to be dragged away to prison by the members of a military junta; and, most pathetically, of a washed-up and defeated emperor hiding his money in a set of holy books and under a carpet to prevent it from being taken away to be "nationalized." While this is ostensibly the story of Haile Selassie's fall from power, excised of names, places and dates it becomes the story of any dictator's seedy demise. As such it makes an interesting companion to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's classic, "The Autumn of the Patriarch," another powerful work on the decay of dicatorial authority. At turns humorous and horrifying, amusing and appaling, ridiculous and realistic, "The Emperor" makes worthy and unforgettable reading, both as history and as great literature
Rating:
Summary: excellent treatment of an autocratic regime
Review: Ryszard Kapuscinski's ability to get "inside" the foreign conflicts he covers is quite remarkable. In "The Emperor," Kapuscinski details the rise and fall of Ethiopian King Haile Selassie who, for nearly his entire reign, was regarded as a god on earth by his people. In stark prose and devastating imagery, Kapuscinski lays out the excesses of the Selassie regime - excesses that ultimately led to Selassie being overthrown. In one particularly moving passage, Kapuscinski describes how leftover food from a regal banquet is thrown down from a window in the King's mansion to starving townspeople nearby. In that passage, Kapuscinski lays out the line between the lavishness in which Selassie basked and the squalor in which most of his subjects existed. Arguably, the single greatest aspect of Kapuscinski as a journalist is his healthy respect for -- and knowledge of when to provide - the history of the place he's covering. In "The Emperor," Kapuscinski provides sufficient background on the Ethiopian conception of rulers as deities, as well as good detail about the wholesale slaughter of Ethiopians during the war with Italy in 1935. But he doesn't overdo it with the history, and that's what makes Kapuscinski's writing so good. As his later books, such as "Imperium," about the fall of the Soviet Union, show, Kapuscinski is a much better reporter than he is a historian. When he is writing about wars, revolts, uprisings, or other events he is witnessing firsthand, Kapuscinski is at his best. Of all the works Kapuscinski produced during his years with the Warsaw News Agency, "The Emperor" is probably the best. As with "Another Day of Life," Kapuscinski's book about the Angolan Civil War, "The Emperor" lays bare a tyrannical political regime, and provides insights into why it collapsed.
Rating: 
Summary: Undeniably Simple
Review: This amazing collection of memories from the staff who served Emperor Haile Selassie I relates the pageantry and hypocrisy which surrounded the reign of His Exalted Majesty. Tales told to Kapuscinski from hiding do not show any less reverence for the disposed leader and only a few individuals allow themselves to question the actions of the Emperor of Emperors. Taken as a whole, these stories show the undeniable truth that greed, wealth, and power can 'pull the wool' over the collective world's eye while the ugly reality struggles to stay alive under such a regime. Even when the truth raises its starving, skeleton head to smile in dementia at foreign reporters and relief workers, the loyal servants follow His Majesty's words without pause. To wonder at the single power wielded by an individual who is in the position to accomplish so much for the good of the portion of humanity which falls under his empire; to wonder why the world looked on with such indifference; to wonder where do we draw the line around our collective conscience, around our collective guilt; to wonder what we have learned to apply to the future from the lessons of history. Kapuscinski's collection causes me to wonder anew at the ability to look straight down the tunnel while ignoring the periphery.
Rating:
Summary: Undeniably Simple
Review: This amazing collection of memories from the staff who served Emperor Haile Selassie I relates the pageantry and hypocrisy which surrounded the reign of His Exalted Majesty. Tales told to Kapuscinski from hiding do not show any less reverence for the disposed leader and only a few individuals allow themselves to question the actions of the Emperor of Emperors. Taken as a whole, these stories show the undeniable truth that greed, wealth, and power can 'pull the wool' over the collective world's eye while the ugly reality struggles to stay alive under such a regime. Even when the truth raises its starving, skeleton head to smile in dementia at foreign reporters and relief workers, the loyal servants follow His Majesty's words without pause. To wonder at the single power wielded by an individual who is in the position to accomplish so much for the good of the portion of humanity which falls under his empire; to wonder why the world looked on with such indifference; to wonder where do we draw the line around our collective conscience, around our collective guilt; to wonder what we have learned to apply to the future from the lessons of history. Kapuscinski's collection causes me to wonder anew at the ability to look straight down the tunnel while ignoring the periphery.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This book was writen in an engrossing and facinating style. However, the level of blatant exageration and even falsehood (the author would have us believe that the ministers of the Ethiopian Empire were jumping out from behind trees to talk to the monarch) is a waste of a great opportunity to document one of the more remarkable reigns of the 20th century. The fact that most of those people that Mr. Kapuscinski claims contributed to his book are deeply offended by it should be enough of a commentary on this work.
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