The Mirror at Midnight

by Adam Hochschild

On This Page

Description

History lies heavily on South Africa, and Adam Hochschild brings to bear a lifetime's familiarity with the country in an eye-opening work that blends history and reportage. Hochschild looks at the tensions of modern South Africa through a dramatic prism: the pivotal nineteenth-century Battle of Blood River -- which determined whether the Boers or the Zulus would control that part of the world -- and its contentious commemoration by rival groups 150 years later. This incisive book offers an show more unusual window onto a society that remains divided. In his epilogue, Hochschild extends his view to the a show less

Tags

Recommendations

Member Reviews

Members

Recently Added By

Author Information

Picture of author.
16+ Works 9,738 Members
Adam Hochschild was born in New York City in 1942. As a college student, he spent a summer working on an anti-government newspaper in South Africa and worked briefly as a civil rights worker in Mississippi in 1964. He began his journalism career as a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. Then he worked for ten years as a magazine editor and show more writer, at Ramparts and Mother Jones, which he co-founded. He has also written for The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. His first book, Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son, was published in 1986. His other books include The Mirror at Midnight: A South African Journey; The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin; Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels; King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa; Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves; and To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918. He teaches writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Awards and Honors

Common Knowledge

Canonical title
The Mirror at Midnight
Original publication date
1990
Important places
South Africa; Zulu Kingdom
Important events
Battle of Blood River, South Africa (1838)
Disambiguation notice
Full title (1990): The mirror at midnight : a South African journey / Adam Hochschild

Classifications

Genres
Nonfiction, Anthropology, Travel, History, General Nonfiction
DDC/MDS
305.800968Society, government, & cultureSocial sciences, sociology & anthropologySocial group - Age, Gender, EthnicityEthnic and national groupsstandard subdivisions / Ethnic and national groups with ethnic origins from more than one continent, of European descentstandard subdivisionsBiography And HistoryAfricaSouth Africa and Africa, Southern
LCC
DT2247 .B56 .H63History of Europe, Asia, Africa and OceaniaAfricaHistory of AfricaSouth AfricaKwaZulu-Natal. Natal
BISAC

Statistics

Members
81
Popularity
391,245
Rating
(3.94)
Languages
English, Polish
Media
Paper, Ebook
ISBNs
8
UPCs
1
ASINs
4