The Inheritors bookcover

The Inheritors

An Intimate Portrait of South Africa's Racial Reckoning
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Description

Winner of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction

A dozen years in the making, The Inheritors weaves together the stories of three ordinary South Africans over five tumultuous decades in a sweeping and exquisite look at what really happens when a country resolves to end white supremacy.

Dipuo grew up on the south side of a mine dump that segregated Johannesburg’s black townships from the white-only city. Some nights, she hiked to the top. To a South African teenager in the 1980seven an anti-apartheid activist like Dipuothe divide that separated her from the glittering lights on the other side appeared eternal. But in 1994, the world’s last explicit racial segregationist regime collapsed to make way for something unprecedented.

With penetrating psychological insight, intimate reporting, and bewitching prose, The Inheritors tells the story of a country in the throes of a great reckoning. Through the lives of Dipuo, her daughter Malaika, and Christoone of the last white South Africans drafted to fight for the apartheid regimeaward-winning journalist Eve Fairbanks probes what happens when people once locked into certain kinds of power relations find their status shifting. Observing subtle truths about race and power that extend well beyond national borders, she explores questions that preoccupy so many of us today: How can we let go of our pasts, as individuals and as countries? How should historical debts be paid? And how can a person live an honorable life in a society thatfor better or worsethey no longer recognize?

Product Details

PublisherSimon & Schuster
Publish DateJuly 19, 2022
Pages416
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconHardback
EAN/UPC9781476725246
Dimensions228.6 X 152.4 X 30.5 mm | 548.9 g

About the Author

Eve Fairbanks writes about change: in cities, countries, landscapes, morals, values, and our ideas of ourselves. A former political writer for The New Republic, her essays and reportage have been published in The Washington PostThe New York Times, and The Guardian, among other outlets. Born in Washington, DC, and raised in Virginia, she’s lived in Johannesburg, South Africa, for thirteen years. The Inheritors is her debut.

Reviews

“Eve Fairbanks writes with a rare combination of fearless psychological insight and political intelligence. This is a tremendous book: utterly absorbing and urgently thought-provoking.” 
Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award 

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