The Republic of Sudan's former Culture Minister and a leading architect in the movement to gain independence for South Sudan, Bona Malwal, provides a factual and personal account of the break up of Sudan. He explores its troubled history post-colonialism and offers a frank account of the many challenges that both nations face in the coming years.

Bona Malwal is a visiting academic at St Antony's College, University of Oxford, UK. He is the founder and editor of two daily English language newspapers in Khartoum, as well as the founder of the Sudan Democratic Gazette, an exile publication for the Sudanese opposition based in London. He is the author of three previous books on Sudan, People and Power in Sudan; Sudan: Second Challenge to Nationhood; and The Comprehensive Peace Agreement 2005: A Critique. Bona holds a Diploma in Journalism from Indiana University, USA and an MSc in Journalism and International Relations from Columbia University, USA. He was held as a prisoner of conscience for 14 months in 1982 under President Jaafar Mohammed Nimieri's military regime in Sudan and was the founding Secretary General of the Southern Front between October 1964 and November 1968. Bona Malwal has been one of the architects and proponents of the right of the people of South Sudan to self-determination.