"Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage" - A Conversation with Author Jonny Steinberg

Jonny Steinberg, ‘Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage.’ University of Massachusetts, Old Chapel, Tuesday October 17th, 4.30 pm.

The English Department is delighted to host Jonny Steinberg, author of the recently published Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage, who will present a talk and participate in conversation on his book. Steinberg is an award-winning South African writer and historian, and his double-biography of Winnie Madikizela Mandela and Nelson Mandela has been released to widespread acclaim.

In writing the intertwined stories of Winnie and Nelson Mandela—one of the most famed couples of all time—Steinberg was taking on a potentially daunting task. Yet he has done so in ways that are both riveting and revelatory. It is not just Winnie and Nelson’s individual lives that absorb, but their existence in a relationship split by time, imprisonment, and intrigue that becomes utterly compelling. This is a book written with compassion, but it is a full accounting unlike any other we have seen. It has epic aspects, yet also remarkable moments of suffering and vulnerability. The tensions between Nelson and Winnie were not only personal but came to reflect different political embodiments. Their struggle was not only against the South African state, but in a certain sense with and against each other. Theirs is a story not to be forgotten.

From the reception to the book:

• Readers will be mesmerized by the thrumming tension and profound emotional complexity of this intimate portrait of two global icons. It’s a knockout.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
• “Elegant and masterful . . . Steinberg has created a landmark dual biography of two unforgettable civil rights heroes.”—Booklist (starred review)

• “Based on far-ranging research as well as on a trove of recently uncovered materials -- as deeply sympathetic to Winnie, caught up in the whirlwind of insurrectionary violence, as to Nelson, trapped in his prison cell and losing touch day by day with the evolving situation on the ground -- Steinberg’s massive essay in political biography is unlikely to be superseded in a long time.”—J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Laureate 2003
   

Jonny Steinberg is the author of several books about everyday life in the wake of South Africa’s transition to democracy. He is a two-time winner of South Africa’s premier nonfiction prize, the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award, and an inaugural winner of the Donald Windham–Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes. Until 2020, he was professor of African studies at Oxford University. He currently teaches part-time at Yale and at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in Johannesburg. He lives in Oxford.

At the event, Jonny Steinberg will be joined in conversation with Stephen Clingman, Distinguished Professor of English, and author of the award-winning biography, Bram Fischer: Afrikaner Revolutionary. (Fischer was the lawyer and political figure who led Nelson Mandela’s defense at the Rivonia Trial, and who was himself sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa.)

The event, which is free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by the following: Dean, College of Humanities and Fine Arts; Dean, Commonwealth Honors College; Dean, Isenberg School of Management; Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies; Department of History; Five College African Studies Council.

There will be a reception after the event, and a booksigning hosted by Amherst Books.