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Book synopsis

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.

Book details

• Full title: Foreign Native
• Author: R.W. Johnson
• Language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 292
• EAN: 9781868427710
• ISBN: 1868427714
• ID: 28698270
• Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers SA
• Weight: 500 g
• Dimensions: 152 × 229 × 21 mm
• Date of publishing: 01. May 2020

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