THE EMPEROR Downfall of an Autocrat <i> by Ryszard Kapuscinski; translated from the Polish by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand (Vintage International: $7.95) </i>

Ryszard Kapuscinski’s “The Emperor” renders a fascinating portrait of the last emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, as told in the testimony of the emperor’s courtiers.

Although Selassie had reigned in Ethiopia since 1930, in 1974 the army deposed the government, arrested the emperor’s officers, launched investigations of corruption and executed numerous dignitaries. On New Year’s Day (Sept. 12), tanks rolled into the palace and an officer read the papers of dethronement to the man heretofore called “King of Kings, Elect of God, Lion of Judah, His Most Puissant Majesty and Distinguished Highness.”

At this time, famine was raging in Ethiopia, and the emperor was personally miserly and vindictive. Yet the courtiers with whom Kapuscinski spoke surreptitiously in the back streets of Addis Ababa still defended the old order. One man called a British journalist an “unprincipled calumniator” when he showed on television what the courtier called “the demagogic trick of showing thousands of people dying of hunger, and next to that His Venerable Highness feasting with dignitaries.” Another said, “it is not bad for national order and a sense of national humility that the subjects be rendered skinnier.”

A compelling account.