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Portrait of a Marriage
Drawing on never-before-seen material, Steinberg—one of South Africa's foremost nonfiction writers—reveals the fractures and stubborn bonds at the heart of a volatile and groundbreaking union, a very modern political marriage that played out on the world stage.
One of the most celebrated political leaders of a century, Nelson Mandela has been written about by many biographers and historians. But in one crucial area, his life remains largely untold: his marriage to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. During his years in prison, Nelson grew ever more in love with an idealized version of his wife, courting her in his letters as if they were young lovers frozen in time. But Winnie, every bit his political equal, found herself increasingly estranged from her jailed husband's politics. Behind his back, she was trying to orchestrate an armed seizure of power, a path he feared would lead to an endless civil war.
Jonny Steinberg tells the tale of this unique marriage—its longings, its obsessions, its deceits—making South African history a page-turning political biography. Winnie and Nelson is a modern epic in which trauma doesn't affect just the couple at its center, but an entire nation. It is also a Shakespearean drama in which bonds of love and commitment mingle with timeless questions of revolution, such as whether to seek retribution or a negotiated peace. Steinberg reveals, with power and tender emotional insight, how far these forever-entwined leaders would go for each other and where they drew the line. For in the end, both knew theirs was not simply a marriage, but a contest to decide how apartheid should be fought.
National Book Critics Circle Awards, 2023
"In this eloquent biography, Steinberg ... captures the mythic quality of these two leaders, their great love story and tragic estrangement, and the hubris and human frailty beneath the personas... . He presents a nuanced, well-contextualized look at their relationship within its time... . [Winnie and Nelson is] a magnificent portrait of two people joined in the throes of making South African history." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Steinberg vividly recreates the political and private lives of antiapartheid activists Nelson and Winnie Mandela in this exceptional dual biography... . 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)
"An engrossing joint biography ... Not only does this book reveal intimate details of a marriage under terrible pressure, but it also provides an insightful history of the fight against apartheid, including the roles of many other key figures... . A superb addition to the history of South Africa and the struggle against apartheid." —Library Journal (starred review)
"Steinberg forces us, with extraordinary pathos..., to reckon with the humanity of his subjects and not the myths we have constructed around them." —The New York Times
"[Winnie and Nelson] does justice both to the couple's political heroism and to the betrayals and the secrets that hounded their union." —The New Yorker
"The most nuanced of storytellers, Steinberg has always had an extraordinary ability to get inside his protagonists' heads, and does so here while scrupulously detailing the brutalizing pressures to which [Winnie and Nelson] were relentlessly subjected, experiences that left them warped and hardened." —The Times (UK)
"There are so many heart-rending revelations about the tortured relationship, extramarital affairs and personal sacrifices of Nelson and Winnie Mandela in this outstanding biography of South Africa's anti-apartheid power couple that if asked to list the most poignant half-dozen, it would be hard to know where to start... . Part of the genius of [Steinberg's] book is to write the Mandelas' story as a mirror of the dilemma over how to respond to apartheid — fight or talk?" —Financial Times
"Raw and revelatory ... An intense, unsparing and at times almost unbearably intimate exploration of one of the world's most famous, most mythical marriages. This is a book to make one wince, and gasp, and turn the page – a book that slowly, remorselessly, tears the bandages off South Africa's carefully constructed image of itself, and of a partnership that lies at the heart of this country's 'miraculous' transformation." —Times Literary Supplement
"[An] excellent new biography of the couple ... Steinberg suspects that the couple's myths will only endure – but his thorough interrogation of their story should help readers reconcile themselves with the messier truth." —The Telegraph
"Powerful ... [Steinberg] has produced a revealing new study of two of the main personalities of the era." —The Economist
This information about Winnie and Nelson was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Antoine De Ras
Jonny Steinberg was born and bred in South Africa. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Three Letter Plague, published by Vintage (also published under the title Sizwe's Test), as well as Midlands and The Number, both of which won South Africa's premier nonfiction literary award, the Sunday Times Alan Paton Prize. Steinberg was also a recipient of one of the inaugural Windham Campbell Prizes. He teaches African Studies and Criminology at Oxford University.
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