Winner of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction
This âelegantâ and âunfailingly empatheticâ narrative (The New York Times) follows three ordinary South Africans living through the most extraordinary reckoning with race and power any modern country has ever faced.
Dipuo, who grew up in apartheid-era Johannesburgâs largest Black township, conceived her only daughter, Malaika, on the mine dump that separated the Black city from the white one. Christo, one of the last white men drafted to police that boundary, would come to realizeâone night on the same mine dumpâthat everything he had been taught to believe was collapsing to make way for something unprecedented. For Malaika and her peers would be born to a historic destiny: to grow up and live in a Black-led society.
All threeâDipuo, Christo, Malaikaâand so many other South Africans would make new lives while facing huge questions: How can we let go of our pasts? How can we, as individuals, pay historic debts? And what will people who care passionately about being good do when the meaning of right changes overnight?
The Inheritors tells a story about the unexpected fates that lie ahead for other countries now facing their own reckonings over history, race, and power. Written at the intersection of politics and psychology and told through an unorthodox blend of ârichly drawnâ lives and âincisive observationsâ (The New York Review of Books), acclaimed journalist Eve Fairbanks brings a coming world âvividly into focusâ (The Washington Post). âResonant with the current American situation,â The Inheritors âdraws out tangled emotions with such skill and sensitivityâ (The New York Times) to arrive at subtle truths and new revelations about our responsibilities to the pastâand to the future.