Virtual Event: Eve Fairbanks

Harvard Book Store's virtual event series welcomes essayist and former political writer for The New Republic EVE FAIRBANKS for a discussion of her book The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa's Racial Reckoning. She will be joined in conversation by op-ed columnist for The Washington Post DANA MILBANK.

Contribute to Support Harvard Book Store

While payment is not required, we are suggesting a $5 contribution to support this author series, our staff, and the future of Harvard Book Store—a locally owned, independently run Cambridge institution. In addition, by ordering a copy of The Inheritors on harvard.com, you support indie bookselling and the writing community during this difficult time.

About The Inheritors

Dipuo grew up on the south side of a mine dump that segregated Johannesburg’s black townships from the white-only city. Some nights, she hiked to the top. To a South African teenager in the 1980s—even an anti-apartheid activist like Dipuo—the divide that separated her from the glittering lights on the other side appeared eternal. But in 1994, the world’s last explicit racial segregationist regime collapsed to make way for something unprecedented.

With penetrating psychological insight, intimate reporting, and bewitching prose, The Inheritors tells the story of a country in the throes of a great reckoning. Through the lives of Dipuo, her daughter Malaika, and Christo—one of the last white South Africans drafted to fight for the apartheid regime—award-winning journalist Eve Fairbanks probes what happens when people once locked into certain kinds of power relations find their status shifting. Observing subtle truths about race and power that extend well beyond national borders, she explores questions that preoccupy so many of us today: How can we let go of our pasts, as individuals and as countries? How should historical debts be paid? And how can a person live an honorable life in a society that—for better or worse—they no longer recognize?

Praise for The Inheritors

“Easily the most compelling new nonfiction book I’ve read in years. The Inheritors is not just a spellbinding, beautifully written story about apartheid South Africa, but also an augury for America today.” —Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

“Eve Fairbanks writes with a rare combination of fearless psychological insight and political intelligence. This is a tremendous book: utterly absorbing, masterfully observed, and urgently thought-provoking. This chronicle of South Africans living in the riptides of history holds up a mirror to us all.” —Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

“The Inheritors does the brutal and scintillating work of asking and answering the question of how truly lasting is liberation, inviting us into the interior lives of four of the most complicated and complicating characters I’ve read this century. Bookmaking like this is a rigorous feat of wonder, love and risk.” —Kiese Laymon, award-winning author of Heavy