Author Guide · Memoir & Reporting
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In 1992 William Finnegan, by then a New Yorker staff writer known for reporting on apartheid and Mozambique’s civil war, published a two-part story about surfing in San Francisco, “Playing Doc’s Games”. He later called it “coming out of the closet as a surfer”. Born in New York City in 1952 and raised in California and Hawaii, he had been surfing since childhood and chasing waves through the South Pacific, Asia, Australia and Africa in his twenties. More than twenty years later he wrote the whole story in Barbarian Days, which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. Before that came four books of reporting, from a Cape Town classroom to rural Mozambique and the poorest corners of 1990s America. This guide covers his five key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 key books · 1986–2015 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
William Finnegan has written five books: Crossing the Line (1986), Dateline Soweto (1988), A Complicated War (1992), Cold New World (1998) and Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life (2015), which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. Start with Barbarian Days; it also tells the story behind his South African reporting.
Where to Start with William Finnegan
If you want his defining book
→ Barbarian Days (2015) — the Pulitzer-winning surfing memoir.
If you want his reporting from apartheid South Africa
→ Crossing the Line (1986) — a year teaching in a Cape Town school.
If you want his American reporting
→ Cold New World (1998) — young people in four struggling places in the 1990s.
If you want war reporting
→ A Complicated War (1992) — Mozambique’s civil war from the ground.
5 William Finnegan Books, in Order
Crossing the Line
His first book. In his twenties, travelling and surfing, Finnegan took a job teaching English at Grassy Park High School in Cape Town, a school for students classified as “coloured” under apartheid, during a time of school boycotts and protest. The book follows his students and his own growing political education. The New York Times Book Review named it one of the ten best nonfiction books of its year.
Dateline Soweto
In 1986, during the state of emergency, Finnegan spent six weeks travelling with Black reporters of the Johannesburg Star, led by Jon Qwelane, as they covered the townships. The book shows how they worked under threat from the army, the police and suspicion within their own communities, and how apartheid split the news itself.
A Complicated War
An account of Mozambique’s civil war between the Frelimo government and the Renamo insurgency, which South Africa backed, based on Finnegan’s reporting inside the country. Published by the University of California Press, it grew out of his New Yorker work on a war that received little attention in the West.
Cold New World
Finnegan follows teenagers and young adults in four places in 1990s America: New Haven, Connecticut; San Augustine County in deep East Texas; the Yakima Valley in Washington; and the Antelope Valley in California. Drugs, poverty, migrant labour and white-power gangs run through their lives. It was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award.
Barbarian Days
A memoir of a life spent surfing, from his boyhood in California and Honolulu through years on the road with his friend Bryan Di Salvatore in the South Pacific, Australia, Asia and Africa, to San Francisco, Madeira and Long Island. It also tells how he became a writer and a reporter. It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, and Amazon Studios has announced a film adaptation with Stephen Gaghan as writer and director.
In What Order to Read William Finnegan
Finnegan’s books stand alone, so you can read them in any order. Barbarian Days makes the best first book, partly because it fills in the life behind the others: the travels that took him to Cape Town and the decision to become a reporter.
After that, read Crossing the Line and Dateline Soweto together as a pair on 1980s South Africa, then A Complicated War, which follows the region’s violence into Mozambique. Cold New World is the odd one out, an American book, and can be read at any point.
A reading path
1. Barbarian Days (2015)
2. Crossing the Line (1986)
3. Dateline Soweto (1988)
4. A Complicated War (1992)
5. Cold New World (1998)
The years · 1952–2016
Quick facts about William Finnegan
- Known for
- He is known for Barbarian Days, a Pulitzer-winning surfing memoir, and for decades of New Yorker reporting on apartheid, war, poverty and the drug trade.
- 1952
- Born in New York City
- 1979
- First published piece, in Mother Jones
- 1987
- Staff writer at The New Yorker
- 2015
- Barbarian Days
- 2016
- Pulitzer Prize for Biography
- Born
- 1952, New York City; raised in Los Angeles and Hawaii
- Education
- BA in literature, University of California, Santa Cruz (1974); MFA, University of Montana
- Worked
- The New Yorker, contributor from 1984, staff writer since 1987
- Reported on
- Apartheid South Africa, Mozambique, Sudan, Mexican drug gangs, immigration in Arizona
- Honours
- Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography (2016); Sidney Hillman Award (1998)
- Lives
- New York City; he surfs off Long Island
The red mark is 2015: Barbarian Days, the surfing memoir that won him the Pulitzer Prize.
How William Finnegan Writes: Reporting From the Inside
Finnegan reports by staying. He did not fly into South Africa to write Crossing the Line; he taught at a Cape Town school for a year. For Dateline Soweto he rode along with Black reporters for six weeks rather than covering the townships himself, and for Cold New World he spent long periods with the same young people in four towns.
For Barbarian Days he turned that method on himself. As he told The Aspen Times, he checked his memory against letters he wrote as a boy, his journals and interviews with “friends and frenemies”. The book is precise about the physical facts of waves, reefs and boards, and about the tension he names directly: between an obsessive pastime and the wish to make a living and be useful.
His prose stays plain and specific, even about war, and he rarely lets himself become the subject outside the memoir. For writers who share his mix of reporting and risk, see Authors like William Finnegan.
Watch
William Finnegan at Aspen Words
Finnegan talks about Barbarian Days and his double life as surfer and reporter in the Aspen Words author series.
Frequently asked questions about William Finnegan’s books
How many books has William Finnegan written?
Five: Crossing the Line (1986), Dateline Soweto (1988), A Complicated War (1992), Cold New World (1998) and Barbarian Days (2015). Most of his work appears as long reporting in The New Yorker.
What are William Finnegan’s books in order?
Crossing the Line: A Year in the Land of Apartheid (1986), Dateline Soweto: Travels with Black South African Reporters (1988), A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique (1992), Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country (1998) and Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life (2015).
What is the best William Finnegan book to start with?
Barbarian Days. It won the Pulitzer Prize and also explains how he came to write the South African books. If you would rather start with his reporting, read Crossing the Line.
What is William Finnegan’s most famous book?
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life (2015), his memoir of a lifetime of surfing, which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
Did Barbarian Days win the Pulitzer Prize?
Yes. It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. It was published by Penguin Press in 2015.
Was William Finnegan a war correspondent?
Yes, among other things. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1987 and has reported on the civil wars in Mozambique and Sudan, apartheid South Africa, and Mexican drug gangs, as well as poverty and immigration in the United States.
Is Barbarian Days being made into a film?
An adaptation has been announced: Amazon Studios hired Stephen Gaghan to write and direct, with Finnegan as an executive producer. No release date has been set.
When was Dateline Soweto published?
In 1988. Some later listings give the date of a paperback reissue in the 1990s, but the book first appeared in 1988 and describes reporting he did in 1986.
What was “Playing Doc’s Games”?
A two-part New Yorker story from 1992 about the surfers of Ocean Beach in San Francisco and the doctor and big-wave surfer Mark Renneker. It was the first time Finnegan wrote at length about his own surfing; Barbarian Days returns to those San Francisco years.
Is William Finnegan still alive?
Yes. He was born in New York City in 1952 and lives in New York, where he still writes for The New Yorker.
Footnotes
- William Finnegan — Wikipedia
- 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Biography — Pulitzer.org
- Dateline Soweto — Publishers Weekly review
- Barbarian Days author bio — LitLovers
- Finnegan coming to Winter Words — The Aspen Times
- Stephen Gaghan to adapt Barbarian Days — World Surf League
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Memoir is a really weird genre, because you’re reporting on your own past.”
— William Finnegan, interview with The Aspen Times (2018)
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