Litnet

Jonny Steinberg went to school and university in Johannesburg. In the mid-1990s, he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship and studied at Oxford University, where he graduated with a doctorate in political theory. He returned to South Africa in 1998 and worked for Business Day, writing on the constitutional court and the police. He left Business Day to write Midlands (2002), his first book, an account of the murder of a white farmer by his black land tenants in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands. Midlands won the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award for non-fiction, and the Booksellers' Choice Award. His second book, The Number (2004), a biography of a Cape Town prison gangster, also won the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award. Jonny is currently working on a book set in Lusikisiki in the former Transkei.