Jonny Steinberg

Jonny Steinberg is a South African journalist and author, Professor of African Studies at the University of Oxford. He is one of the most acclaimed nonfiction writers working in Africa and is known for his deeply immersive, literary approach to social reporting. Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage (2023) won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. The book is a joint biography of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Nelson Mandela, examining their marriage as a prism through which to understand the anti-apartheid struggle and its long aftermath. Drawing on interviews, archives, and court records, Steinberg offers a more complex and human portrait of both figures than most previous biographies. Steinberg's earlier books include A Man of Good Hope (2014), about a Somali refugee in post-apartheid South Africa, which won the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award, and Three-Letter Plague (2008), about HIV/AIDS in a rural South African village. Sizwe's Test (2008) examines HIV stigma and the AIDS crisis in South Africa. His work has been widely praised for combining the rigor of journalism with the empathy and character development of the best literary nonfiction. Steinberg received his education in South Africa and at Oxford, where he has been based for many years. His work has been translated into multiple languages.