Jonny Steinberg’s book makes Wolfson shortlist
- Wits University
Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage by Jonny Steinberg shortlisted for the 2024 Wolfson History Prize
The Wolfson Foundation announced today, 23 September, the shortlist for the 2024 Wolfson History Prize, which includes the book Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage authored by Professor Jonny Steinberg and published by William Collins. The 2024 winner will be announced on Monday, 2 December 2024.
Steinberg tells the tale of the unique marriage of Winnie and Nelson turning the course of South African history through this political biography. It has been described as a “modern epic in which trauma doesn’t affect just the couple, but an entire nation – a Shakespearean drama in which bonds of love and commitment mingle with timeless questions of revolution.”
Through an article in The Conversation Africa, Steinberg explains the premise of the book: “Winnie and Nelson were consummate performers who wanted the story of their marriage to tell the story of South Africa’s struggle for freedom. The premise of the book is that their marriage really does embody the tale of modern South Africa, but not as they intended. The idea is that the book is at once about a couple, a nation, and a series of ideas about freedom, forgiveness and vengeance.”
Steinberg is a Visiting Professor at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research. A former Rhodes scholar, Steinberg has a doctorate in political theory from Oxford University where he currently teaches. A public intellectual of note, Steinberg is a multitalented writer whose insightful and engaging work covers a remarkably wide range of topics related to some of the fundamental questions facing South Africa and the African continent today. His body of work is an outstanding fit with WiSER’s focus on social, economic and cultural research in an interdisciplinary vein, reaching across many and varied publics.
His books include Midlands: A Very South African Murder, The Number, Three Letter Plague: A Young Man's Journey through a Great Epidemic, Thin Blue: The Unwritten Rules of Policing South Africa, Little Liberia: An African Odyssey in New York City, A Man of Good Hope, and the shortlisted Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage.
“In 2024, the shortlist focuses on major turning points in the histories of the Americas, Britain, Bangladesh, Germany, India, Pakistan and South Africa, exploring themes ranging from politics, slavery and international relations to healthcare and societal transformation,” said the Foundation in a statement.
The most valuable history writing prize in the UK, the Wolfson History Prize celebrates books that combine excellence in research with readability for a general audience, demonstrating the relevance of history and historical writing to society today. The Wolfson History Prize awards a total of £75,000 with the winner receiving £50,000 and each of the five shortlisted authors receiving £5,000.
The Wolfson History Prize 2024 shortlist includes:
• Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century by Joya Chatterji (The
Bodley Head)
• Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire by Nandini Das
(Bloomsbury Publishing)
• Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave
Trade by Nicholas Radburn (Yale University Press)
• Our NHS: A History of Britain’s Best-Loved Institution by Andrew Seaton (Yale
University Press)
• Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage by Jonny Steinberg (William Collins)
• Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022 by Frank Trentmann (Allen Lane).
Over the past 52 years, the annual Wolfson History Prize has championed the finest history writing by authors and historians including Simon Schama, William Dalrymple, Amanda Vickery and Clare Jackson. Previous winners of the Wolfson History Prize include Antony Beevor for Stalingrad, Antonia Fraser for The Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in Seventeenth-Century England and Mary Fulbrook for Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice. The 2023 prize was won by Halik Kochanski for Resistance: The Underground War in Europe, 1939-45.
Read more at www.wolfsonhistoryprize.org.uk.