Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish writer and journalist who gained international acclaim for his books chronicling the unrest in Africa and the Middle East, died in Warsaw on Tuesday at age 74, his publisher said.

Kapuscinski died at Warsaw's Banacha hospital Tuesday following heart surgery, said Marek Zakowski, the president of Czytelnik publishing house, which has published several of Kapuscinski's books.

Zakowski declined to give any more details about the surgery or cause of death.

"There is no one among Poland's writers to fill in the space left by him," said Zakowski, who knew the writer for more than 30 years.

"It's a rare kind of great personality. He was always curious to learn more about the world, he was curious to meet people."

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Kapuscinski served as the sole Africa correspondent for the Polish Press Agency, or PAP, reporting on the upheaval streaking across the continent as African nations shook off colonial rule and declared independence.

The best-known of his 19 books was The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat (1978), which chronicled the decline of Haile Selassie's regime in Ethiopia, and was widely interpreted by Polish readers as a criticism of Poland's communist regime.

Three years later, in 1982, he published Shah of Shahs, a book about the 1979 Iranian revolution that toppled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, ushering in the era of the Ayatollahs.

Several of his other books were also translated into English. He also wrote Another Day of Life about the Angolan civil war, Imperium about the waning days of the Soviet Union, The Soccer War and The Shadow of the Sun, on his four decades of covering life in Africa.

He is survived by his wife, Alicja, and a daughter, Zakowski said.