During his career as a foreign correspondent, Ryszard Kapuscinski has witnessed twenty-seven revolutions and coups. Imperium is the story of an empire: the constellation of states that was submerged under a single identity for most of this century the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. During the year the Berlin Wall came down, as the empire convulsed and died, Kapuscinski talked to hundreds of ordinary people about their extraordinary lives and the terror from which they were emerging. Imperium is a race to capture people's memories, and their fears for the future, before the wonderful, terrible events of 1989 receded into the past.
