28: Stories of AIDS in Africa is a 2007 nonfiction book by Canadian author Stephanie Nolen

Stephanie Nolen

Stephanie Nolen is a Canadian journalist and writer. She is currently the South Asia correspondent for The Globe and Mail. From 2003 to 2008, she was the Globe's Africa correspondent, and she has reported from more than 40 countries around the world...

, Africa correspondent for The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...

.

The book profiles 28 Africans who have HIV

HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

 or AIDS

AIDS

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

, or have otherwise been affected by it. The number 28 was chosen to reflect the 28 million Africans who had HIV in 2007, according to UNAIDS. Nolen spent six years traveling through Africa to gather the stories. The stories range from orphans, a truck driver, a miner, and a grandmother raising her grandchildren alone in poverty, to college educated patients, military members, clergy, and even Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...

, whose son died of AIDS.

Stephen Lewis

Stephen Lewis

Stephen Henry Lewis, is a Canadian politician, broadcaster and diplomat. He was the leader of the social democratic Ontario New Democratic Party for most of the 1970s. During many of the those years as leader, his father David Lewis was simultaneously the leader of the Federal New Democratic Party...

 described the book as "the best book ever written about AIDS, certainly the best I’ve ever read."

See also

• Zackie Achmat
  Zackie Achmat
  Zackie Achmat is a South African activist, most widely known as founder and chairman of the Treatment Action Campaign and for his work on the behalf of people living with HIV and AIDS in South Africa.-Early life:...
  
   - Story 14
• Gideon Byamugisha
  Gideon Byamugisha
  Reverend Canon Gideon Byamugisha is an Anglican priest in Uganda with a parish outside of Kampala. In 1992, he became the first religious leader in Africa to publicly announce that he was HIV positive...
  
   - Story 21
• Nelson Mandela
  Nelson Mandela
  Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
  
  - Story 27

Editions

• Hardcover, Random House, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8027-1598-2.
• Hardcover, Knopf Canada, 2007, ISBN 978-0-676-97822-3.

External links

• 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa home. Stories, pictures, and organizations
• 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa from Random House (the publisher)
• 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa at Amazon.com