Book Launch : Jonny Steinberg's A Man of Good Hope

WiSER invites you to the launch and discussion of

Jonny Steinberg’s new book

A Man of Good Hope

In January 1991, when civil war broke out in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, two thirds of the city's population fled. Among them was eight-year-old Asad Abdullahi. His mother murdered, his father in hiding, he was swept - alone - into a wartime migration that scattered Somalians throughout Africa and the world.  In his new book, A Man of Good Hope, acclaimed writer Jonny Steinberg narrates Asad's story - from Mogadishu to Nairobi to Addis Ababa, Dire Dawa to Johannesburg, Sterkstroom, Cape Town, Blikkiesdorp and Texas. Steinberg examines the life of a boy becoming a man who is thrown about and yet whose trajectory is nonetheless shaped by his own decisions; whose powerful agency is made possible by curtailed self knowledge; and who is constituted and re-constituted by his relationships with women.

Jonny Steinberg will be in discussion with Sarah Nuttall, Director of WiSER,
about the meanings of migration, non-fiction as a tactic of writing, what Asad can't say, won't say, is tired of saying, and when to shift, as author and interpreter of another's life, from a narrative of loss and victimhood to a narrative about risk-taking; Somali politics; and the new traumas of Texas, as well as the possibilities it offers Asad, even as it tracks his every move. 

Friday, 26^th September 2014  13h15

WiSER Seminar Room, 6^th Floor, Richard Ward Building,
East Campus, Wits University

RSVP: Najibha.Deshmukh@wits.ac.za