Here is access to the private thoughts and conversations of Nelson Mandela. The main sources for the book are his prison letters, a collection of taped conversations, his notebooks and the previously unpublished sequel to his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. The prison letters alone are an outstanding read, giving much insight into how Nelson Mandela became the man he is, the background to South African politics, the long struggle for freedom, here it is as events progressed.
'Conversations With Myself does the world an extraordinary service in giving us [a] picture of Mandela the man.' From the foreword by President Barack Obama.
From letters written in the darkest hours of his 27 years of imprisonment to the draft of an unfinished sequel to Long Walk to Freedom , this intensely personal book is a rare chance to spent time with Nelson Mandela the man, in his own voice: direct, clear, private.
Here he is making notes and even doodling during meetings, or recording troubled dreams on the desk calendar of his cell on Robben Island; writing journals while on the run during the anti-apartheid struggles of the early 1960s, or conversing with friends in almost 70 hours of recorded interviews. An intimate journey from the first stirrings of his political conscience to his galvanizing role on the world stage, Conversations With Myself is an extraordinary glimpse of the man behind one of the world's most beloved public figures.
'More revealing of the man than his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom - and in many respects more moving as well.' F.W. De Klerk
'A book
that breaks the heart and then makes it sing.' Andrew Rawnsley,
Observer Books of the Year
Author
About Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela was born in Transkei, South Africa on 18 July 1918. He joined the African National Congress in 1944 and was engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party's apartheid policies after 1948. From 1964 to 1982, he was incarcerated at Robben Island Prison and then later moved to Pollsmoor Prison, during which his reputation as a potent symbol of resistance to the anti-apartheid movement grew steadily. Released from prison in 1990, Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and was inaugurated as the first democratically-elected president of South Africa in 1994. He is the author of the international bestseller Long Walk to Freedom.
