Always Another Country

Born in exile, in Zambia, to a guerrilla father and a working mother, Sisonke Msimang is constantly on the move. Her parents travel from Zambia to Kenya and Canada and beyond with their young family. Always the outsider, and against a backdrop of racism and xenophobia, Sisonke develops her keenly perceptive view of the world. In this sparkling account of a young girl's path to womanhood, Sisonke interweaves her personal story with her political awakening in America and Africa, her euphoria at returning to the new South Africa, and her disillusionment with the new elites.

"Brutally and uncompromisingly honest, Sisonke's beautifully crafted storytelling enriches the already extraordinary pool of young African women writers of our time. Sisonke, a child of the Struggle, revisits the metamorphosis of the value system embraced by the liberation movements and emerges as a powerful free spirit, nurtured by its resilient core values."-- Gra a Machel "Every South African who wants to define their own path to the future must read this book and hear this voice. Sisonke challenges us not to cry for help, but to scream for change." - Jay Naidoo "Sisonke Msimang kindles a new fire in our store of memoir, a fire that will warm and singe and sear for a long, long while." -- Njabulo S. Ndebele, author The Cry of Winnie Mandela "A brave and intimate journey. Msimang delivers a deep call for fierce courage in the face of hypocrisy and compassion when faced with our shared humanity." - Yewande Omotoso, author of Bom Boy and The Woman Next Door "Sisonke Msimang kindles a new fire in our store of memoir, a fire that will warm and singe and sear for a long, long while." - Njabulo S. Ndebele, author of Fools and Other Stories and The Cry of Winnie Mandela "A lyrical and admirably subtle exploration of how elusive our place in the world is ... a reader's delight." - Eusebius McKaiser, author of A Bantu in My Bathroom and Run, Racist, Run "Sisonke Msimang's Always Another Country is my favourite kind of memoir, so lyrical and dreamlike that it reads like a novel. It's an artful meditation on exile and return, womanhood and motherhood unfolding against the backdrop of post-apartheid South African politics."- Taiye Selasi, The Guardian, Best Books of 2017 "Sisonke Msimang's book has joined the chorus of black women who have used memoir and autobiography to tell their stories in order to defy the erasure of their lives and significance... Ultimately, I was drawn to how Msimang uses memoir to construct her memories, while telling a story that is both personal and political... If you appreciate the dance between memory, fiction, history and nostalgia (with a dash of vulnerability for good measure), Always Another Country is highly recommended." - Anthambile Masola, Mail & Guardian

Sisonke Msimang (Swaziland, 1974) is a South African writer, speaker and political analyst in issues related to race, gender and democracy. With her successful literary debut, Always Another Country, she has established herself as one of the most exciting new contemporary voices in literature. Born to parents living in political exile, Sisonke Msimang was raised in Zambia, Kenya and Canada, before going to the US as an undergraduate. She has a Master's Degree in Political Science and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Macalester College in the USA. She has held fellowships at Yale University and the Aspen Institute and was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (WEF). She has worked for the United Nations and as an Executive Director of George Soros' Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. Now based in Perth, Australia, she is Program Director for the Centre for Stories, a social enterprise organization, from where she travels regularly to the US, South Africa and other countries. She contributes to publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian and The Huffington Post, and has over 20,000 followers on Twitter (@Sisonkemsimang). Her TED Talk, 'If a story moves you, act on it', has been viewed over a million times.