Lynda Schuster
Author of
Dirty Wars and Polished Silver: The Life and Times of a War Correspondent Turned Ambassatrix (Melville House Publishing, 2017)
A Burning Hunger: One Family’s Struggle Against Apartheid (Ohio University Press, 2006)
Lynda Schuster is a former foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and Christian Science Monitor. She has reported from Central and South America, Mexico, the Middle East and Africa. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Granta and Utne Reader, among others. She is also the author of A Burning Hunger: One Family's Struggle Against Apartheid.
Facebook / www.LyndaSchuster.com
Books BY lynda
Dirty Wars and Polished Silver is Schuster’s story of her life abroad as a foreign correspondent in war-torn countries and, later, as the wife of a U.S. Ambassador. It chronicles her time reporting on uprisings in Central America, bearing witness to the horrors of apartheid in South Africa, dodging rocket fire in Lebanon, and grieving the loss of her first husband, a fellow reporter, who was killed only ten months after their wedding.
But even after her second marriage, to a U.S. diplomat, all the black-tie parties and personal staff and genteel “Ambassatrix School” grooming in the world could not protect her from the violence of war. Equal parts gripping and charming, Dirty Wars and Polished Silver is a story about one woman’s quest for self-discovery—only to find herself, unexpectedly, more or less back where she started: wiser, saner, more resolved. And with all her limbs intact.
If the Mandelas were the generals in the fight for South Africa’s black liberation, the Mashininis were the foot soldiers. Theirs is a story of exile, imprisonment, torture, and loss, but also of dignity, courage, and strength in the face of appalling adversity. Originally published in Great Britain to critical acclaim, A Burning Hunger tells a deeply moving human story and is one of the seminal books about the struggle against apartheid. It shows the human catastrophe that plagued generations of black Africans in the powerful story of one religious and law-abiding Soweto family. Basing her narrative on extensive research and interviews, Schuster richly portrays this remarkable family and in so doing reveals black South Africa during a time of momentous change.