Overview
In Foreign Native, RW Johnson looks back with affection and humour on his life in Africa. From schooldays in Durban - fresh off the plane from Merseyside - to later years as an academic, director of the Helen Suzman Foundation and formidable political commentator, he has produced an entertaining and occasionally eye-popping memoir brimming with history, anecdote and insight.
Johnson charts his evolution from enthusiastic, left-leaning Africanist to political realist, relating episodes that influenced his intellectual worldview, including time spent among the exiled liberation movements in London during the 1960s, a sojourn in newly independent Guinea and more recent forays into Zimbabwe. There are wonderful stories, some hilarious, others filled with pathos, about the multitude of characters - Harold Strachan, Tom Sharpe, Ronnie Kasrils, Helen Suzman, Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, among many others - that he met along the way.
Perceptive, critical and full of verve, Foreign Native is leavened with a deep humanity that makes it a pleasure to read.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781868427710
- ISBN-10: 1868427714
- Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers
- Publish Date: July 2020
- Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.62 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.87 pounds
- Page Count: 294
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