Nelson Mandela book "Conversations with Myself" offers unique personal portrait

[News_Editor]

Nelson Mandela book "Conversations with Myself" offers unique personal portrait

2010-10-11 17:11:47 GMT+7 (ICT)

JOHANNESBURG (BNO NEWS) -- Former South African President Nelson Mandela is releasing a new book on Tuesday that, unlike his 1995 autobiography, offers a unique personal portrait about arguments with his wife, his first stirrings of political consciousness, to his role on the world stage.

The book, entitled 'Conversations with Myself', is set to be released worldwide on Tuesday in 22 editions and 20 languages. It opens with a foreword by U.S. President Barack Obama who writes that Mandela is a great inspiration.

"It is a rare chance to spend time with Nelson Mandela the man, in his own voice: direct, clear and private," said Sello Hatang, Information Communication Manager for the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

Parts of the book, which presents a more human Mandela, was compiled by the Nelson Mandela Foundation's Center of Memory and Dialogue. It is aimed to give readers access to the person 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 his autobiography '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 struggle or conversing with friends," Hatang said. "In these pages he is neither an icon nor a saint; here he is like you and me."

Mandela, who served as president of South Africa from 1994 until 1999 and became internationally known as a figure of the anti-apartheid movement, is 92 years old. "Conversations with Myself" goes on sale on Tuesday.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2010-10-11

[stander]

Everybody is entitled to their own opinion of the man, for me he is terrorist.

[H2oDunc]

Have to agree with the above. An ex terrorist that is suddenly lauded as some sort of saint. In the end just what did he actually do for Africa ? NOTHING! It is still the most corrupt place on earth. He did nothing to stop the likes of Mugabe from driving the white man from Africa and watched the continent go downhill fast. I for one will not be reading it!