The UMass Amherst English Department will host a conversation with Jonny Steinberg, South African historian and award-winning author of the book, “Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage,” on Tues., Oct. 17 at 4:30 p.m. in Old Chapel. 

Image

Steinberg, whose double biography of Winnie Madikizela Mandela and Nelson Mandela was released earlier this year to widespread acclaim, 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, which is free and open to the public, 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 was sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa.

A reception and book signing hosted by Amherst Books will follow. The event is co-sponsored by Dean Joye Bowman of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts; Dean Mari Castaneda of the Commonwealth Honors College; Dean Anne Massey of the Isenberg School of Management; the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies; the Department of History; and the Five College African Studies Council.

More information about the event and reviews of Steinberg’s book can be found on the College of Humanities and Fine Arts webpage.