A Love Letter to Lesotho

WHEN WILL MCGRATH’S cultural anthropologist wife, Ellen, suggested that they spend a year in Lesotho, he had never heard of the tiny landlocked country entirely surrounded by South Africa—–or its unenviable status as the site of the second highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS on the planet.

Nevertheless, McGrath embraced the idea and took a job as a high school teacher in Lesotho while Ellen researched the impact of the AIDS crisis on Lesotho’s residents.

Will McGrath '98

During their stay, the award-winning journalist—–who has written for The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Guernica, Pacific Standard, Roads & Kingdoms and other magazines—–fell in love with the ruggedly beautiful mountain kingdom and its inhabitants. His memoir about the experience, Everything Lost is Found Again: Four Seasons in Lesotho, was published in January 2019.

“I’m excited to have this book out in the world, and I wanted to pass the information along to the Loyola community,” he says. “I’m proud of the book but, beyond that, the publisher has agreed to donate 15 percent of all sales to a tiny Lesotho orphanage that is featured prominently in the book, so the more readers it reaches, the better.”

Early in the book, McGrath made his intentions clear. “I can say one thing with certainty,” he wrote. “I did not come to Lesotho to find myself. There is nothing more tedious than white people venturing into foreign territory in search of self-knowledge, in search of authenticity—–which must be among the language’s emptiest words. There is something deeply unsettling about people who collect the essential stuff of someone else’s existence for exotic furniture in their own small-scale dramas. I did not come to Lesotho for set dressing; I came to learn about the different ways that people live.”

Described by Kirkus Reviews as “a memorable love letter to the remote African kingdom that stole his heart,” McGrath’s memoir has won numerous awards, including the Dzanc/Disquiet Open Borders Book Prize, which celebrates works that express diverse points of view and global ways of thinking and being. To learn more about McGrath’s books and publications, visit willmcgrath.net.

Will McGrath ’98, author of the award-winning memoir, Everything Lost is Found Again: Four Seasons in Lesotho