28 | Granta

  • Published: 05/12/2013
  • ISBN: 9781846275692
  • Granta Books
  • 416 pages

28

Stephanie Nolen

We have all seen the grim pictures of dying Africans on the news, or been momentarily shocked by the statistics; we may think we’ve heard all we need to know – or can bear to know – about the story of Aids in Africa. But look beyond the harrowing dispatches and the noisy headlines and something else emerges: not just a single sad story featuring countless, voiceless victims, but many different stories that haven’t been told, stories of courage, determination and dignity, and each one with an individual human face. In 28, the reader meets the doctor dodging bullets as she runs a makeshift clinic in war-torn Congo, hear why Nelson Mandela decided to go public about the cause of his son’s death, encounter the trucker who has spent a lifetime picking up prostitutes on the lonely highways of East Africa, and have an audience with the Botswanan beauty queen proud to be crowned Miss HIV Stigma-Free. Stephanie Nolen’s eloquent and sympathetic book paints a fresh and inspiring portrait of this continent in crisis, making it impossible for us to ignore and impossible to forget.

Essential reading in the Age of Aids. Never earnest, and, whilst often painful, full of humane and painstakingly researched detail. Everyone needs to read this book

Emma Thompson

From the tiny virus, via 28 individual human stories, to an entire continent, these stories will tear you apart before putting you back together, fully armed and ready to go to war with a virus more dangerous than any WMD

Bono

Magnificent, inspiring, informative

John le Carre

The Author

Stephanie Nolen is a foreign correspondent for The Globe and Mail, the national newspaper of Canada. At 37, she is an nine-time nominee for Canada’s top reporting prize, the National Newspaper Award, and a three-time winner of the International Reporting award. She was the recipient of the 2003, 2004 and 2006 Amnesty International Award for Human Rights Reporting, for reports from war zones in Uganda and Sudan. In late 2008, she ended a five-and-a-half year posting covering Africa from a base in Johannesburg. She had a special mandate in Africa to cover HIV-AIDS, and it was that reporting that led to 28. She has written for publications including Newsweek, the Independent, and Elle. She is also the author of Promised the Moon: The Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race and Shakespeare’s Face. Born in Montreal, she is a graduate of the University of King’s College in Halifax and the London School of Economics. She is a failed student of flying trapeze, a devoted canoe-tripper and a novice pie-baker. She is currently reporting on South Asia and lives in New Delhi with her partner and son. www.28stories.com

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