Winnie & Nelson

‘Gripping and profoundly moving’ DAMON GALGUT
‘Deft and operatic’ OBSERVER
A TIMES BEST BIOGRAPHY OF 2023

Reviews

A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR; A WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR; A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR; A TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR; A WASHINGTON POST BOOK OF THE YEAR
‘A gripping portrait of Africa’s most famous romantic couple . . . The most nuanced of storytellers, Steinberg has always had an extraordinary ability to get inside his protagonists’ heads . . . [and] is a superb chronicler of modern Africa, capturing the poignant, questing energy of its inhabitants’ lives like no other writer’ The Times
‘Winnie & Nelson is a beautiful and immensely sad book. Steinberg, a distinguished South African writer and scholar, chronicles that pain, and writes about each of them with insight and empathy . . . Winnie & Nelson is more than a joint biography, as good as it is at that; it’s a deft and operatic interweaving of two outsized characters’ Observer
‘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’ Daily Telegraph, **** review
‘[A]n empathetic portrait of one of the most controversial power couples in history… What Steinberg does extremely well in this book is to pry those doors ajar using archive, interviews and never-seen-before transcripts of conversations between Winnie and Nelson during prison visits’ Sunday Times
‘Gripping and profoundly moving, this is Jonny Steinberg’s finest book. I can’t wait to read it again’ Damon Galgut, Booker Prize–winning author of The Promise, in Literary Hub
‘Unlikely to be superseded in a long time’ J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Laureate 2003
‘Remarkable . . . a powerful, page-turning political fable unlike any I’ve read’
Aminatta Forna, author of Happiness and The Window Seat