Nelson MandelaConversations with Myself Hardcover Book

About

Nelson Mandela is widely considered to be 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 bestowed his entire extant personal papers, which offer an unprecedented insight into his remarkable life.

A singular international publishing event, Conversations with Myself draws on Mandela's personal archive of never-before-seen materials to offer unique access to the private world of an incomparable world leader. Journals kept on the run during the anti-apartheid struggle of the early 1960s; diaries and draft letters written in Robben Island and other South African prisons during his twenty-seven years of incarceration; notebooks from the postapartheid transition; private recorded conversations; speeches and correspondence written during his presidency--a historic collection of documents archived at the Nelson Mandela Foundation is brought together into a sweeping narrative of great immediacy and stunning power. An intimate journey from Mandela's first stirrings of political consciousness to his galvanizing role on the world stage, Conversations with Myself illuminates a heroic life forged on the front lines of the struggle for freedom and justice.

While other books have recounted Mandela's life from the vantage of the present, Conversations with Myself allows, for the first time, unhindered insight into the human side of the icon.

Conversations With Myself is a moving collection of letters, diary entries and other writing that provides a rare chance to see the other side of Nelson Mandela’s life, in his own voice: direct, clear, private. An international bestseller, Conversations With Myself is an intensely personal book that complements his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.

In his foreword to Nelson Mandela’s book, President Barack Obama writes: ‘Conversations With Myself does the world an extraordinary service in giving us a picture of Mandela the man.’

Conversations With Myself gives readers insight to the darkest hours of Nelson Mandela’s twenty-seven years of imprisonment and his troubled dreams in his cell on Robben Island. It contains the draft of an unfinished sequel to Long Walk to Freedom, notes from Madiba’s famous speeches, and even doodles made during meetings. There are photos from his life, journals written while on the run during the anti-apartheid struggles of the early 1960s, and conversations 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

‘Intensely moving, raw and unmediated, told in real time with all the changes in perspective that bring, over the years, mixing the prosaic with the momentous. Health concerns, dreams, political initiatives spill out together, to provide the fullest picture yet of Mandela.’ Peter Godwin, Observer

Product Features

• Spend time with Nelson Mandela the man, in his own voice!
• A moving collection of letters and diary entries
• Author: Nelson Mandela
• Published by: Pan Macmillan
• Date published: 01 October 2010
• Pages: 480
• Hardcover