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main sources for the book are his prison letters, a collection of taped conversations, his notebooks and the previously unpublished sequel to his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.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.
'These archives contain traces of my life and those who have lived it with me. It is a treasure house, one that is full of surprises, crossing paths, dead ends, painful reminders and unanswered questions' Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela is one of the most inspiring and iconic figures of our age. Now, after a lifetime of taking pen to paper to record thoughts and events, hardships and victories, he has opened his personal archive, which offers an unprecedented insight into his remarkable life.
Conversations With Myself gives readers access to the private
man behind the public figure: from letters written in the darkest hours
of Mandela's twenty-seven years of imprisonment to the draft of an
unfinished sequel to Long Walk to Freedom. 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 in the early 1960s, or
conversing with friends in almost seventy hours of recorded
conversations. In these pages he is neither an icon nor a saint; here
he is like you and me. With a Foreword by President Barack Obama this
is an intimate journey from the first stirrings of his political
conscience to his galvanising role on the world stage.
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.