Sunday Times Literary Awards shortlist | Jonny Steinberg on ‘Winnie and Nelson’
NON-FICTION
Criteria: The winner should demonstrate the illumination of truthfulness, especially those forms of it that are new, delicate, unfashionable and fly in the face of power; compassion; elegance of writing; and intellectual and moral integrity.
Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage by Jonny Steinberg (Jonathan Ball Publishers)
Jonny Steinberg tells the tale of this unique, iconic marriage — its longings, its obsessions, its deceits in a page-turning political biography with Shakespearean dramatis. Winnie and Nelson is a modern epic in which trauma doesn’t affect just the couple at its centre, but an entire nation.
Judges said: Telling the tale of a statesman as storeyed as Nelson Mandela is difficult, combining it with the story of another icon in his wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, is remarkably ambitious and fraught with peril. Steinberg does it with skill, courage and sensitivity.
We asked Jonny Steinberg a few questions about Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage
What sparked your interest in re-examining and writing about Winnie and Nelson - two figures in our history which we feel we all know as South Africans?
My initial intention was to write a biography of Nelson Mandela. After he died, I started rereading the major Mandela biographies and it struck me that it was not possible to write candidly and intimately about him while he was alive, and that we actually didn’t really know him. His death had ushered in a new chapter: it was possible to begin writing about him anew, as a human being. To write about him like that while he lived would have been to attack him.
The title is interesting. Why was ‘Winnie and Nelson’ chosen and not ‘Nelson and Winnie’? Why a ‘Portrait of a Marriage’?
As I began the research on what I thought would be a biography of Nelson Mandela, I discovered that the longer he remained a prisoner, the more he became dependent on the idea that he and Winnie had been gloriously happy before he went to prison. She became the very core of his identity. He couldn’t make sense of his life without the idea of her. This surprised me. I’d always thought of him as a political being right down to his toes. It struck me that a book about the marriage would be much more interesting than a biography of him. And since Winnie had arrived so forcefully, so commandingly, in the book I thought I’d been writing, it seemed appropriate to begin the title with her name, not his.
Your research is impressive as well as exhaustive. How did you prevent it from overwhelming the narrative?
Once you’ve found your purpose, and are confident in it, it becomes easier to leave stuff out. You become very focused, and the pace and rhythm of the book is what counts.
What was the most difficult and scariest part of writing the book?
Winnie in the late 1980s and Nelson in the early 1950s. They did ugly things then in their respective lives. I did not want to hide what they’d done, but I also didn’t want readers to lose sympathy with them. Striking the balance was hard.
What was the most interesting thing you learned when researching the book?
I learned lots of surprising things, and I wouldn’t want to choose any one as the most interesting. But here is one: In many ways Nelson Mandela was ordinary. He was a black man and a patriarch who’d been robbed of the power to care for his family — just as millions of other South African patriarchs had been under apartheid. It made him very, very sad and lonely. It defined him.
What impression do you want readers to take away after reading this?
One of the most gratifying aspects of writing is being surprised by what readers make of your books. You lose a measure of control once the book is published and out in the world. People respond to it in ways you didn’t dream of. That is part of the magic. To say that I want readers to come away with a particular impression is to disrespect that magic.