Ryszard Kapuscinski was born in Pinsk (Belarus) in 1932, and began studies at the University of Warsaw in 1951, where he studied History and earned his M.A. He has taught at the universities of Caracas (1978) and Philadelphia's Temple Hall University (1988) as visiting professor, and as a reader at Harvard, London, Canberra, Bonn and British Columbia University in Vancouver (Canada).

Between 1959 and 1981 he worked in journalism as a correspondent for the Polish Press News Agency in Africa, Asia and Latin America, collaborating with such publications as Time, the New York Times and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He is considered one of the world's top reporters, a person about whom authors like Susan Sontag and Paul Auster have said, in their nomination for his candidature, that, "I cannot think of another living writer, novelist, poet or essayist whose work is more important to me". He sits on several editorial boards, and since 1962 has combined his work as a journalist (inspiring García Márquez to label him "an authority on the subject") with his literary activities. He is the author of nineteen books, of which nearly a million copies have been sold, and some of which have been translated into over thirty languages. The Bush, Polish Style (1962) was his first work, which was followed by others such as The Emperor (1978) - on the decadence of Haile Selassie's reign in Ethiopia - , The Sha of Shahs (1982), The Soccer War (1992), Lapidarium (1990), Imperium (1994) - on the break-up of the Soviet Union -, Ebony (1998) - on the future of the African continent - as well as Z Afryki (Out of Africa) (2000), a photograph album.

Invested Doctor Honoris Causa for the University of Silesia in 1997, he was won various awards for his literary creation, including the Alfred Jurzykowski Award (New York, 1994), the Hansischer Goethe (Hamburg, 1998) and the Imegna (Italy, 2000).

Ryszard Kapuscinski died in Varsovia on January 23, 2007 when he was 75 years old.