Synopses & Reviews
For the past six years, Stephanie Nolen has traced AIDS across Africa, and
28 is the result: an unprecedented, uniquely human portrait of the continent in crisis. Through riveting, anecdotal stories, she brings to life men, women, and children involved in every AIDS arena, making them familiar. And she explores the effects of an epidemic that well exceeds the Black Plague in scope, and the reasons why we
must care about what happens.
In every instance, Nolen has borne witness to the stories she relates, whether riding with truck driver Mohammed Ali on a journey across Kenya; following Tigist Haile Michael, a smart, shy fourteen-year-old Ethiopian orphan fending for herself and her baby brother on the slum streets of Addis Ababa; chronicling the efforts of Alice Kadzanja, an HIV-positive nurse in Malawi; or interviewing Nelson Mandelas family about coming to terms with his own sons death from AIDS. Nolens stories reveal how the disease works and spreads; how it is inextricably tied to conflict and famine and to the diverse cultures it has ravaged; how treatment works, and how people who cant get treatment fight to stay alive with courage and dignity against huge odds.
Imagine the entire population of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles combined infected with HIV, and its magnitude in Africa is clear. Writing with power and simplicity, Stephanie Nolen makes us listen, allows us to understand, and inspires us to care. Timely and transformative, 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa is essential reading for anyone concerned about the fate of humankind. Click here to learn more about Stephanie Nolen and her book, 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa. Click here to listen to an interview with author Stephanie Nolen, as she talks about some of the people she has met covering AIDS in Africa. Stephanie Nolen is the award-winning Africa bureau chief for Torontos Globe and Mail, and one of only three journalists in the world wholly dedicated to the AIDS story. She has reported from more than forty countries around the world, and won Canadas National Newspaper Award for International Reporting two years in a row. Nolen was the recipient of the 2003 and 2004 Amnesty International Award for Human Rights Reporting, for reports from war zones in Uganda and Sudan, and also won the Markwell Award of the International Society of Political Psychology for her creative brilliance, humanitarian compassion, personal courage, and relentless pursuit of truth.” She is the author of Promised the Moon: The Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race and Shakespeares Face. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. For the past six years, Stephanie Nolen has traced AIDS across Africa, and 28 is the result: an unprecedented, uniquely human portrait of the continent in crisis. Through riveting, anecdotal stories, she brings to life men, women, and children involved in every AIDS arena, making them familiar. And she explores the effects of an epidemic that well exceeds the Black Plague in scope, and the reasons why we must care about what happens.
In every instance, Nolen has borne witness to the stories she relates, whether riding with truck driver Mohammed Ali on a journey across Kenya; following Tigist Haile Michael, a smart, shy fourteen-year-old Ethiopian orphan fending for herself and her baby brother on the slum streets of Addis Ababa; chronicling the efforts of Alice Kadzanja, an HIV-positive nurse in Malawi; or interviewing Nelson Mandelas family about coming to terms with his own sons death from AIDS. Nolens stories reveal how the disease works and spreads; how it is inextricably tied to conflict and famine and to the diverse cultures it has ravaged; how treatment works, and how people who cant get treatment fight to stay alive with courage and dignity against huge odds.
Imagine the entire population of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles combined infected with HIV, and its magnitude in Africa is clear. Writing with power and simplicity, Stephanie Nolen makes us listen, allows us to understand, and inspires us to care. Timely and transformative, 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa is essential reading for anyone concerned about the fate of humankind.
Stephanie Nolen, a journalist for the Toronto Globe and Mail, gives us 28 moving stories of daily life in AIDS-devastated Africanone for every million Africans who are HIV-positive. These stories offer astonishing glimpses if the people of a continent brought to its knees . . . Nolen is a pro; in the dankest wattle hut, you sense the notepad at the ready.”D.T. Max, Newsday
Stephenie Nolan, journalist for the Toronto Globe and Mail, gives us 28 moving stories of daily life in AIDS-devastated Africaone for every million Africans who are HIV-positive. These stories offer astonishing glimpses of the people of a continent brought to its knees. Nolen is a pro; in the dankest wattle hut, you sense the notepad at the ready.”D.T. Max, Los Angeles Times
Nolen is a gifted listener and storyteller . . . Her collection . . . pays loving tribute to the people of Africa . . . Although history and science are woven lightly in and around the anecdotes and photographic portraits of the 28, this is a book about human life and human nature.”The Globe and Mail
Stephanie Nolen looks behind the facts and stats to talk to 28 people across the continent affected by the virus. Through them, she builds up a larger narrative: of mass social stigma and ignorance; corrupt governments; exploitative drug companies; and a dispassionate and largely disinterested West. A welcome dispatch from an epic disaster we ignore at our peril.”Metro (London)
In 28, Nolen marshals the reporting and storytelling skills that have made her, after UN special envoy Stephen Lewis, this countrys most compelling and vigorous voice for action on the grim parasite worming its way across Africa. In clear, insightful prose and vivid, though never lurid, detail, she allows her charactersone for every million peopleto tell tales of despair and remarkable courage, willful ignorance and improbable triumph.”The Gazette (Montreal)
A kind of continental survey of the impact of the AIDS pandemic on Africa, in stories that are frequently both tragically sad and just as often hugely inspiring.”
Calgary Herald
[Nolen] is an evocative and empathetic writer.”The Nation
Magnificent, inspiring, informative. Nolen opens the essential door to the brave, suffering, human reality of the African AIDS crisis.”John le Carré
This book is magnificent. Its probably the best book ever written about AIDS, certainly the best Ive ever read. I wept when I finished, not just because its beautifully written, not just because the last chapter tears the heart out, not just because its a work of such force and feeling and power, not just because its so intensely and astonishingly human, not just because it covers the entire landscape of the virus, but because its impact could shape public opinion as never before.”Stephen Lewis, former UN Special Envoy HIV/AIDS in Africa
If a war had killed 20 million soldiers, and left 28 million more dying of wounds, wed call it the worst such tragedy since World War II. This is the scale of AIDS in Africa. Stephanie Nolen brings this story to life in a moving, deeply human way. Through these portraits shrewdly chosen, varied, and sometimes startlingly unexpectedshe artfully puts a series of human faces on the greatest health crisis of our time.”Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopolds Ghost and Bury the Chains
28 can soon be 48, 98 and more. And not just in Africa. And it does not have to be. Nolen shows that the struggle of one to live with dignity must be the struggle of all. Read. Weep. Rage. And above all else like those people described in this brilliant bookfind the courage to do.”Dr. James Orbinski, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Médecins Sans Frontières
A book of quiet yet overwhelming power, delivering a message of devastating moral authority. Moving, heartrending and uplifting, Stephanie Nolens book bears impeccable witness to the unique and savage phenomenon of AIDS in Africa.”William Boyd, author of Restless and Brazzaville Beach
AIDS in Africa is an enigma. The more it spreads, the less we see it. It is deadly yet deniable. It hides in full view of everyone. What this moving book does is to catch it by the tail and show us its face it is our own.”Christopher Hope, author of My Mothers Lovers
This is a formidable book of record . . . from the tiny virus, via 28 individual human stories, to an entire continent. The 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 W.M.D.”Bono
Essential reading in the Age of AIDS, it is never earnest, and, whilst often painful, full of humane and painstakingly researched detail.”Emma Thompson"According to UNAIDS, the number of HIV-infected people in Africa is 28 million. But Nolen, veteran Toronto Globe and Mail Africa bureau chief, doesn't believe it: after nine years of reporting on the epidemic, she thinks that number is conservative. Here she offers 28 searing portraits of Africans affected by the deadly virus. Scattered across the continent from the slums of Lagos, Nigeria, to the bush in southern Zambia, these Africans present a mosaic of a continent in crisis and a collective cry for help. She examines the role of soldiers, a 'key vector' for AIDS, through the tale of Andualam Ayalew, a commando who was kicked out of the Ethiopian army after testing positive for HIV. He learned of AIDS prevention at a clinic and, risking arrest, returned to his unit to teach his former comrades and other soldiers about using condoms. Agnes Munyiva, a prostitute for 30 years, who has had contact with thousands of men in a slum outside Nairobi, Kenya, does not have HIV. Her natural immunity has brought doctors and researchers from as far away as Canada to study her. With a seasoned journalist's finesse, Nolen effortlessly weaves technical informationhealth statistics, disease data, NGO reportsinto these deeply intimate glimpses of people often overlooked in the flood of contemporary media. Nolen's book packs a real emotional wallop.Publishers Weekly (starred review) Nolen puts a very human face on HIV/AIDS in Africa, verbally and visually. A photograph accompanies each of the book's 28 personal histories (one subject stands for one million infected people in sub-Saharan Africa). The faces in the photos appear no different than faces of everyday Americans, but that appearance belies the horrific reality of lives shredded by devastating disease. The stories, ranging from those of orphaned children on their own, struggling to keep from being raped by adult neighbors, to that of an HIV-positive beauty queen, couldn't be more illustrative of the dissimilarity of Africa to North America. To cite one example, there is 12-year-old Lefa Khoele, stuck in grade 3 because every year he has been too sick to take end-of-year exams. His is a common situation for infected African children. Nolen sees beneath the surfaces of these individuals, estranged and all but destroyed by governmental ineptitude and denial, and evinces their loves and hopes and family ties, their humanness, with which all others can identify.”Booklist
Nolen gives the epidemic a human facemore precisely, 28 human faces, one for each million Africans estimated to be infected with HIV. Ill healthcare workers and activists are portrayed along with ordinary Africans whose lives have been forever changed by AIDS. Nolen tells their stories simply and elegantly, blending their personal experiences with relevant background information about the epidemic. Never sentimental, she lets the people and their experiences speak for themselves. The result is both an informative and a powerful read, which will help Western readers connect personally with a crisis that too often seems remote. Though these books cover similar ground, each makes a unique, valuable contribution to the literature on this important topic. Both are highly recommended for all collections.”Library Journal
Review
"Nolen's stories give a human face to HIV/AIDS in Africa and enrich our understanding of the disease in intangible ways." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"[An] informative and a powerful read, which will help Western readers connect personally with a crisis that too often seems remote." Library Journal
Review
"The marvelous gift of Stephanie Nolen's 28 is that it allows the reader a chance to mingle, a chance to hob-nob, with fascinating and eloquent people from across sub-Saharan Africa. Professors and sex-workers, truckers and doctors, old ladies and orphaned children, celebrities and beggars, all raise their voices here. The music of these combined voices is intelligent and pained; it sings to us of suffering, stigma, compassion, courage, and heartrending love." Melissa Fay Greene, author of There Is No Me Without You
Synopsis
For the past six years, Stephanie Nolen has traced AIDS across Africa, and 28 is the result: an unprecedented, uniquely human portrait of the continent in crisis. Through riveting, anecdotal stories, she brings to life men, women, and children involved in every AIDS arena, making them familiar to us in a way nobody else has. In the process, she explores the effects of an epidemic that well exceeds the Black Plague in scope, and the reasons why we must care about what happens.
In every instance, Nolen has borne witness to the stories she relates, whether riding with truck driver Mohammed Ali on a journey across Kenya; following Tigist Haile Michael, a smart, shy fourteen-yearold Ethiopian orphan fending for herself and her baby brother on the slum streets of Addis Ababa; chronicling the efforts of Alice Kadzanja, an HIV-positive nurse in Malawi; or interviewing Nelson Mandela's family about coming to terms with his own son’s death from AIDS. Nolen's stories reveal how the disease works and spreads; how it is inextricably tied to conflict and famine and to the diverse cultures it has ravaged; how treatment works, and how people who can't get treatment fight to stay alive with courage and dignity against huge odds. Imagine the entire combined population of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles infected with HIV, and its magnitude in Africa is clear.
Writing with power and simplicity, Stephanie Nolen makes us listen, allows us to understand, and inspires us to care. Timely and transformative, 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa is essential reading for anyone concerned about the fate of humankind.
"I looked at AIDS in Africa for a long time before I understood what I was seeing. AIDS is not an event, or a series of them; it's a mirror held up to the cultures and societies we build." Stephanie Nolen
Synopsis
“This is a formidable book of record…from the tiny virus, via twenty-eight individual human stories, to an entire continent. The 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. Nolen opens the essential door to the brave, suffering, human reality of the African AIDS crisis.”—John le CarréFor the past six years, Stephanie Nolen has traced AIDS across Africa, and 28 is the result: an unprecedented, uniquely human portrait of the continent in crisis. Through riveting, anecdotal stories, she bears witness and brings to life men, women, and children involved in every AIDS arena, exploring the effects of an epidemic that well exceeds the Black Plague in scope, and the reasons why we must care about what happens. Nolens stories reveal how the disease works and spreads; how it is inextricably tied to conflict and famine and to the diverse cultures it has ravaged; how treatment works; and how people who cant get treatment fight to stay alive with courage and dignity against huge odds. Writing with power and simplicity, she makes us listen, allows us to understand, and inspires us to care
Synopsis
For the past six years, Stephanie Nolen has traced AIDS across Africa, and
28 is the result: an unprecedented, uniquely human portrait of the continent in crisis. Through riveting, anecdotal stories, she brings to life men, women, and children involved in every AIDS arena, making them familiar. And she explores the effects of an epidemic that well exceeds the Black Plague in scope, and the reasons why we
must care about what happens.
In every instance, Nolen has borne witness to the stories she relates, whether riding with truck driver Mohammed Ali on a journey across Kenya; following Tigist Haile Michael, a smart, shy fourteen-year-old Ethiopian orphan fending for herself and her baby brother on the slum streets of Addis Ababa; chronicling the efforts of Alice Kadzanja, an HIV-positive nurse in Malawi; or interviewing Nelson Mandela's family about coming to terms with his own son's death from AIDS. Nolen's stories reveal how the disease works and spreads; how it is inextricably tied to conflict and famine and to the diverse cultures it has ravaged; how treatment works, and how people who can't get treatment fight to stay alive with courage and dignity against huge odds.
Imagine the entire population of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles combined infected with HIV, and its magnitude in Africa is clear. Writing with power and simplicity, Stephanie Nolen makes us listen, allows us to understand, and inspires us to care. Timely and transformative, 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa is essential reading for anyone concerned about the fate of humankind. Click here to learn more about Stephanie Nolen and her book, 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa. Click here to listen to an interview with author Stephanie Nolen, as she talks about some of the people she has met covering AIDS in Africa.
About the Author
Stephanie Nolen is the award-winning Africa bureau chief for Toronto's Globe and Mail, and one of only three journalists in the world wholly dedicated to the AIDS story. She has reported from more than forty countries around the world, and won Canada's National Newspaper Award for International Reporting two years in a row. Nolen was the recipient of the 2003 and 2004 Amnesty International Award for Human Rights Reporting, for reports from war zones in Uganda and Sudan, and also won the Markwell Award of the International Society of Political Psychology for her "creative brilliance, humanitarian compassion, personal courage, and relentless pursuit of truth." She is the author of Promised the Moon: The Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race and Shakespeare's Face. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.