Michela Wrong

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Michela Wrong, Berlin 2006

Michela Wrong (* 1961 in London ) is a British journalist and writer .

Life

Wrong's father was the well-known medical professor Oliver Wrong (1925–2012), who specializes in the research and healing of kidney diseases , and her mother comes from northern Italy. She grew up in Camden , a northern part of London , and attended the Camden School for Girls. She then studied philosophy and sociology at Jesus College, Cambridge . She then graduated in journalism from Cardiff . She began her career as a journalist at the Reuters news agency as a correspondent first for Rome , then for Paris and from 1992 for the Ivory Coast . As a freelancer, as one of only two correspondents stationed in Kinshasa at the time, she wrote for Reuters and the BBC at the time of the dissolution of the Mobutu government and the genocide in Rwanda . She worked for the Financial Times London for four years in Nairobi , from where she wrote on East and Central African topics such as the change of power and rebel activities in the Congo. From 2004 to 2008 she wrote regularly Africa columns for the British weekly New Statesman ; she has also written numerous book reviews for the Spectator , the oldest British weekly newspaper, extensive travel reports for the lifestyle magazine Condé Nast Traveler and political analyzes for the US magazine Foreign Policy . Since 2014 she has also worked as Literary Director at the Miles Morland Foundation, a foundation that supports African writers.

In her first book, In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz , published in 2000, she describes the rise and fall of the President of Zaire Mobutu. The name Kurtz in the title of the book refers to a character from Joseph Conrad's story Heart of Darkness . The corruption and malice of this novel antagonist allegorically describe the moral state of Mobutu's politics. The book won a prize for non-fiction from the writers' association PEN .

With I Didn't Do it for You , published in 2005, she wrote the first non-fiction book on the history of Eritrea to the present day, taking into account the colonial influences from Italy, Great Britain, the influence of Ethiopia, the United States and the Soviet Union and the perspective of the Population. Her first two books were controversial. It's Our Turn to Eat , published in 2009, is a biography by John Githongo and is about corruption in Kenya under the Mwai Kibaki government .

Borderlines , Michela Wrong's first novel , was published in August 2015 . It is about a British lawyer who goes to a fictional East African country and is involved in proceedings before the International Criminal Court in The Hague because of border disputes there . In doing so, she entangles herself in moral conflicts.

Awards

  • 2001: James Star Prize for nonfiction from the English Chapter of the PEN writers' association for In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz
  • 2009: Nomination for the Orwell Prize for It's Our Turn to Eat. The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower

Works

Non-fiction

  • In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz. Living on the Brink of Disaster in the Congo . Fourth Estate, London 2000, ISBN 1-84115-421-0 (German-language edition: In the footsteps of Mr. Kurtz . Edition Tiamat, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89320-058-4 ).
  • I didn't do it for you. How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation . Fourth Estate, London 2005, ISBN 0-00-715096-2 .
  • It's our turn to eat. The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower . Fourth Estate, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-00-724196-5 (German edition: Now it's our turn: Corruption in Kenya. The story of John Githongo. Edition Tiamat, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-89320-140- 2 ).

Novels

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Portrait ( memento from October 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) on the AStA website of the University of Marburg
  2. ↑ Portrait on Harper Collins Australia (English)
  3. ↑ Interview from April 5, 2006 on bookbuffet.com (English)
  4. ↑ Message from May 15, 2001 ( Memento from August 21, 2001 in the Internet Archive ) on today @ penguin (English)
  5. ↑ Reading sample ( memento from October 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) of the German-language edition ( PDF ; 111 kB).
personal data
SURNAME Wrong, Michela
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH London