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Jonny Steinberg

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Jonny Steinberg
Steinberg in 2015
Steinberg in 2015
Born (1970-03-22) 22 March 1970 (age 54)
South Africa
EducationWits University
Alma materUniversity of Oxford
Notable worksWinnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage (2023)
Notable awardsNational Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
Windham–Campbell Literature Prize;
Sunday Times Alan Paton Award;
Media24 Books Literary Prize: Recht Malan Prize for Nonfiction

Jonny Steinberg (born 22 March 1970) is a South African writer and scholar.

Biography

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Steinberg was born and raised in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, South Africa. He was educated at Wits University in Johannesburg, and at the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and earned a doctorate in political theory. He taught for nine years at Oxford, where he was Professor of African Studies. He currently teaches at Yale University's Council on African Studies.[1]

Books

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Steinberg's first two books – Midlands (2002), about the murder of a white South African farmer, and The Number (2004), a biography of a prison gangster – won South Africa's premier non-fiction award, the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award. In 2013, Steinberg was an inaugural winner of the Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes.[2]

His books also include Three-Letter Plague (published as Sizwe's Test in the United States), which chronicles a young man's journey through South Africa's AIDS pandemic. It was a Washington Post Book of the Year[3] and was shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize.[4] Steinberg is also the author of Thin Blue (2008), an exploration of the unwritten rules of engagement between South African civilians and police,[5] and Little Liberia: An African Odyssey in New York (2011), about the Liberian civil war and its aftermath in an exile community in New York. Writing in The Guardian, Margaret Busby described it as an "extraordinary, stylistically varied mix of reportage, history and biography".[6]

Steinberg's 2015 book, A Man of Good Hope, was described by Observer reviewer Ian Birrell as "an epic African saga that chronicles some fundamental modern issues such as crime, human trafficking, migration, poverty and xenophobia, while giving glimpses into the Somali clan system, repression in Ethiopia and lethal racism in townships".[7] The book was adapted into a stage production by the Isango Ensemble and premiered at the Young Vic in London in 2016.[8]

Steinberg's dual biography of Winnie Madikizela and Nelson Mandela, Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage, was published in May 2023. Damon Galgut described it as "a devastating study of modern South Africa", while Hlonipha Mokoena named it "a masterful book that rattles your bones".[9][10] Richard Stengel, ghostwriter of Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, called it "a beautiful and immensely sad book. [...] [Steinberg] gently but firmly removes the masks [Winnie and Nelson] each carefully constructed, only to find other masks underneath."[11] J. M. Coetzee described the book "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".[12] It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography[13] and was shortlisted for the LA Times Book Prize for biography.[14] It was a Washington Post, New Yorker, Guardian, Times of London, Times Literary Supplement, Spectator and Waterstones Book of the Year.[15][16][17][18][19][20]

Awards and honours

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Bibliography

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  • Midlands. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2002. xii, 259 pages. ISBN 1-86842-124-4
  • The Number: One Man's Search for Identity in the Cape Underworld and Prison Gangs. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2004. 427 pages. ISBN 1-86842-205-4
  • "Nongoloza's Children: Western Cape Prison Gangs During and After Apartheid", Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 2004
  • Notes from a Fractured Country. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2007
  • Sizwe's Test. New York: Simon and Schuster, February 2008. Hardcover, 368 pages. ISBN 1-4165-5269-3; ISBN 978-1-4165-5269-7
  • Thin Blue: The Unwritten Rules of Policing South Africa. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, August 2008.
  • Three-Letter Plague. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, March 2008; Vintage Random House, December 2008
  • Little Liberia: An African Odyssey in New York. London: Jonathan Cape Random House, January 2011; Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, March 2011
  • A Man of Good Hope. London: Jonathan Cape, 2015; ISBN 978-0224094122. New York: Knopf, 2015; ISBN 978-0385352727
  • One Day in Bethlehem. London: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2019; ISBN 9781868429349.
  • Winnie & Nelson. Portrait of a Marriage. London, William Collins, 2023. ISBN 9780008353797

References

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  1. ^ "Jonny Steinberg | The MacMillan Center Council on African Studies". african.macmillan.yale.edu. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  2. ^ "Jonny Steinberg". Windham Campbell Prizes. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  3. ^ "Holiday Guide 2008: Gifts - Best Books of 2008 (washingtonpost.com)". The Washington Post. 17 February 2011. Archived from the original on 17 February 2011. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  4. ^ a b "'Keeper' by Andrea Gillies wins first ever Wellcome Trust Book Prize". Wellcome (Press release). 5 November 2009. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  5. ^ Bosworth, Mary; Hoyle, Carolyn (2012). What is Criminology?. OUP Oxford. pp. 130–131. ISBN 9780191635410
  6. ^ Busby, Margaret (12 March 2011). "Little Liberia: An African Odyssey in New York City by Jonny Steinberg – review". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  7. ^ Birrell, Ian (4 January 2015). "A Man of Good Hope review – a refugee's tale". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  8. ^ "A Man of Good Hope". Young Vic website. 16 April 2019. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  9. ^ "The TLS Books of the Year 2023: Our contributors decide". TLS. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  10. ^ Mokoena, Hlonipha (13 June 2023). "REVIEW | Love turning like quicksilver: Jonny Steinberg's Winnie & Nelson". Life. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  11. ^ Stengel, Richard (14 May 2023). "Winnie & Nelson by Jonny Steinberg; The Plot to Save South Africa by Justice Malala – review". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  12. ^ Steinberg, Jonny (11 May 2023). Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage. William Collins. ISBN 978-0-00-835378-0.
  13. ^ 2023 NBCC Award Winners, The National Book Critics Circle Awards.
  14. ^ a b Gelt, Jessica (21 February 2024). "Raja Shehadeh, Yiyun Li and Maria Bamford among L.A. Times Book Prize finalists". Los Angeles Times.
  15. ^ "50 notable books of nonficrion". Washington Post.
  16. ^ "The Best Books of 2023". The New Yorker. 25 January 2023. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  17. ^ Sturges, Fiona (7 December 2023). "The best memoirs and biographies of 2023". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  18. ^ "The TLS Books of the Year 2023: Our contributors decide". TLS. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  19. ^ "Books of the year II: more choices of reading in 2023". The Spectator. 8 November 2023. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  20. ^ Waterstones
  21. ^ a b "Alan Paton Award Winners". Goodreads.
  22. ^ "Sunday Times CNA Literary Awards".
  23. ^ Sunday Times CNA Literary Awards
  24. ^ Baker, Dorie (4 March 2013). "Yale awards $1.35 million to nine writers". YaleNews. Retrieved 5 March 2013.
  25. ^ "Sunday Times CNA Literary Awards", Wikipedia, 17 January 2024, retrieved 16 February 2024
  26. ^ "2020 Media24 Books Literary Prize: Recht Malan Prize for Nonfiction - LitNet". LitNet - Die boekehuis met baie wonings. 18 June 2020. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
  27. ^ "Jonny Steinberg Wins 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award for 'Winnie & Nelson: A Portrait of a Marriage'". macmillan.yale.edu. 1 April 2024. Retrieved 10 April 2024.
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