Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in Mvezo in 1918 and died in 2013. He trained as a lawyer, became a leader of the African National Congress, and spent 27 years in prison for his fight against apartheid, 18 of them on Robben Island. After his release in 1990 he led the ANC. In 1993 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with F. W. de Klerk, and in 1994 he became South Africa's first democratically elected president. He held the office until 1999. In 2007 he founded The Elders, a group of senior global figures working for peace and human rights.
Mandela was a political leader first and a writer second, so his books are memoir and record rather than literary experiment. The themes are discipline, patience, how confinement shapes a person, and the hard work of reconciliation. Conversations with Myself gathers prison letters, journals, notes and recorded conversations, along with a draft of an unfinished sequel to his autobiography.
Long Walk to Freedom came out in December 1994. Mandela began the draft on Robben Island in the mid-1970s. He passed pages to fellow prisoners Ahmed Kathrada and Walter Sisulu for comment, and Mac Maharaj later smuggled the manuscript out. Accounts also say he buried the original in the prison garden. After 1990 he worked with the American journalist Richard Stengel to finish the book from that draft and a series of interviews. It was adapted into the 2013 film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, directed by Justin Chadwick, with Idris Elba in the lead. The Nelson Mandela Foundation has since documented some errors in the published text, which is worth knowing if you read it as history.
Start with Long Walk to Freedom. It runs from a rural childhood to the presidency, and the Robben Island section, titled Beginning to Hope, is the part many readers remember. Read Conversations with Myself afterwards if you want the private notes behind the public figure.
