In John Berger and Me, the eminent Australian sociologist Nikos Papastergiadis recalls his relationship with the late English writer and art critic John Berger. His memoir is both a portrait of their friendship, and an account of the work of his former mentor, one which combines Berger’s abiding interest in migrants and migration, with Papastergiadis’ reflections on his own family’s experience of migration. Berger was a successful author and artist who lived in England before he moved to a peasant village in the Haute-Savoie. Papastergiadias’ father was born in a peasant village in Greece and migrated to work in factories in Australia. The memoir covers a period of ten years in the 1990s when the younger Nikos spent many summer months with the distinguished author, living in the family house and sharing duties such as the gathering of the harvest. It draws on personal memories, his deep knowledge of Berger’s work, which was the subject of his doctoral thesis, and anecdotes of life in the village, and beyond. The intertwining of their common experiences means that the book is both a biography and an autobiography, as well as a tribute to one of the most significant cultural thinkers of recent times.
