Overview
Foreword by President Barack Obama
Nelson Mandela is one of the most inspiring and iconic figures of our age. Now, after a lifetime of recording thoughts and events, hardships and victories, he has opened his personal archive, which offers unprecedented insight into his remarkable life.
From letters written in the darkest hours of his twenty-seven years of imprisonment to the draft of an unfinished sequel to Long Walk to Freedom, Conversations with Myself gives readers access to the private man behind the public figure. Here he is making notes and even doodling during meetings, or transcribing troubled dreams on the desk calendar in his cell on Robben Island; writing journals while on the run during the antiapartheid struggle in the early 1960s, and conversing with friends in almost seventy hours of recorded conversations. Here he is neither icon nor saint.
An intimate journey from the first stirrings of political consciousness to his galvanizing role on the world stage, Conversations with Myself is a rare chance to spend time with Nelson Mandela the man, in his own voice: direct, clear, private.
Synopsis
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
Publishers Weekly
The South African statesman and former political prisoner bares his mind and soul in this inspiring collection of writings and interviews. Culled from Mandela's letters, notebooks, taped conversations, prison diaries, calendars, and an unfinished autobiography, the material includes reminiscences of the antiapartheid movement, lessons in revolutionary theory gleaned from his guerrilla training, vignettes of prison life, seething protests to authorities, tender missives to loved ones, canny political strategizing and quiet philosophical reflections. The entries recall moments of high drama, days of dreary routine and interludes of random strangeness, including a prison screening of Revenge of the Nerds. Mandela registers his anger at the humiliations and hardships imposed on him by apartheid, and his anguish over his long separation from his family (officials even denied his requests to attend his mother's and son's funerals). But what comes through most strongly is his steadfast resolve--"the knowledge that in your day you did your duty and lived up to the expectations of your fellow man is in itself a reward"--and a shrewd, ebullient humanity that finds and embraces the good even in his prison guards. The result is a moving account of Mandela's struggle and a testament to his triumph. Photos. (Oct.)
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Nelson Mandela's Conversations With Myself is not an autobiography in any conventional sense. Instead, it is a gathering of documents that fully reveal the South African leader in the process of becoming himself. These testimonies include excerpts from journals hastily scrawled on the run while he was a hunted anti-apartheid activist; diaries and drafts of letters written during his quarter century of imprisonment; and speeches, correspondence and other statements written during his eventful presidency. This 448-page book could be the most personal witness to this brave man's life.
Publishers Weekly
The South African statesman and former political prisoner bares his mind and soul in this inspiring collection of writings and interviews. Culled from Mandela's letters, notebooks, taped conversations, prison diaries, calendars, and an unfinished autobiography, the material includes reminiscences of the antiapartheid movement, lessons in revolutionary theory gleaned from his guerrilla training, vignettes of prison life, seething protests to authorities, tender missives to loved ones, canny political strategizing and quiet philosophical reflections. The entries recall moments of high drama, days of dreary routine and interludes of random strangeness, including a prison screening of Revenge of the Nerds. Mandela registers his anger at the humiliations and hardships imposed on him by apartheid, and his anguish over his long separation from his family (officials even denied his requests to attend his mother's and son's funerals). But what comes through most strongly is his steadfast resolve--"the knowledge that in your day you did your duty and lived up to the expectations of your fellow man is in itself a reward"--and a shrewd, ebullient humanity that finds and embraces the good even in his prison guards. The result is a moving account of Mandela's struggle and a testament to his triumph. Photos. (Oct.)J. M. Ledgard
…arbitrariness is what makes Conversations With Myself such dramatic reading. And there are plenty of interesting details…Its collection of letters and meditations, together with its thorough index and appendix, belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in the nature of power and resistance.—The New York Times
From the Publisher
“A prisoner became a free man; a liberation figure became a passionate voice for reconciliation; a party leader became a president who advanced democracy….He has done so much to change his country, and the world, that it is hard to imagine the history of the last several decades without him.” —from the foreword by President Barack Obama
“A literary album…Intensely moving, raw, and unmediated…Provides the fullest picture yet of Nelson Mandela…A necessary book.” —Peter Godwin, The Observer (London)
“There are fascinating glimpses of the inner man, and flashes of his celebrated humor….Conversations presents a Mandela more people may feel they can emulate.” —Chicago Tribune
“This book will reduce the reader to both rapture and tears....Deeply moving.” —Financial Times (London)
“A truly unprecedented moment in publishing…Stunning…Nothing short of a monumental historical document.” —The Daily Beast“This book will reduce the reader to both rapture and tears.” —Alec Russell, Financial Times “Outstanding for what it offers. . . Its collection of letters and meditations, together with its thorough index and appendix, belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in the nature of power and resistance.” —J.M. Ledgard, The New York Times Review of Books