Books by Jonny Steinberg
Jonny Steinberg is a South African writer, scholar and journalist. In 2003, his book Midlands, which explores racial conflict in the post-apartheid countryside through an account of an unsolved murder, received South Africa’s most prestigious literary prize, the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award for non-fiction
“Winnie and Nelson are heroic figures, but there’s a lot which is not at all heroic about them. It’s a ‘portrait of a marriage’, a very loaded phrase, because it’s warts and all. It’s warts which many historians had not talked or not known about, and previous biographers had left out (which just illustrates how biography is such a treacherous thing: it can be utterly misleading by omission). At the crudest level, we hear about the love affairs of both parties, the way in which they emotionally tried to cope against the crushing, evil machine that they were fighting. It’s both a history of South Africa with a freshness and a chilling detail that I hadn’t appreciated, but also makes one feel tremendously sorry for the two principal characters, in a Greek tragedy sort of way. Sometimes you’re just really cross with them. How could they end up doing such self-destructive things? In other words, the book brings the reader very close to two fascinating people who changed the world.” Read more...
The Best History Books of 2024: The Wolfson History Prize
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Theologians & Historians of Religion
“It’s the story of a kid, a Somali refugee.” Read more...
Ian Goldin, Economist
Interviews with Jonny Steinberg
The best books on Identity in South Africa, recommended by Jonny Steinberg
The journalist and author discusses five books with strikingly different interpretations of what it means to be South African today, whether black or white
Interviews where books by Jonny Steinberg were recommended
The best books on Immigration, recommended by Ian Goldin
What are the economic effects of immigration? Economist Ian Goldin, a professor at Oxford University and founding director of the Oxford Martin School, recommends books and explains.
-
1
Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century
by Joya Chatterji -
2
Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire
by Nandini Das -
3
Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
by Nicholas Radburn -
4
Our NHS: A History of Britain's Best Loved Institution
by Andrew Seaton -
5
Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage
by Jonny Steinberg -
6
Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022
by Frank Trentmann
The Best History Books of 2024: The Wolfson History Prize, recommended by Diarmaid MacCulloch
The Best History Books of 2024: The Wolfson History Prize, recommended by Diarmaid MacCulloch
To win the Wolfson History Prize, a book must be both original and accessible to the general reader. British historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, one of the prize’s judges, talks us through the six books that made the 2024 shortlist, from the voyage of an English diplomat to Mughal India to the intimacy of a South African marriage, from the barbarity of the slave trade in the 18th century to the history of an institution that provides free health care to all.
-
1
King: A Life
by Jonathan Eig -
2
Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
by Ilyon Woo -
3
Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage
by Jonny Steinberg -
4
Monet: The Restless Vision
by Jackie Wullschläger -
5
Traces of Enayat
by Iman Mersal, translated by Robin Moger -
6
Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors
by Ian Penman
Award-Winning Biographies of 2024, recommended by Cal Flyn
Award-Winning Biographies of 2024, recommended by Cal Flyn
We asked Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn to put together a concise round-up of notable biographies of 2024, comprising the winners of relevant literary awards from the United Kingdom and the United States. The list includes two biographies of married couples and an “unclassifiable” literary detective story tracking down details of a forgotten Egyptian poet.
