Conversations with Myself, Nelson Mandela
Conversations with Myself, Nelson Mandela
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Conversations with Myself

Author: Nelson Mandela

Narrator: John Kani

Unabridged: 10 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/11/2010

Synopsis

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.

About Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was a former President of South Africa, the first to be elected in fully representative democratic elections. He was born in Transkei, South Africa, in 1918. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist and leader of the African National Congress. In 1964, he was convicted of crimes including sabotage committed in the struggle against apartheid. He was imprisoned for 27 years at Robben Island prison and Pollsmoor prison. During his incarceration, his reputation as a potent symbol of resistance to apartheid grew steadily. Released from prison in 1990, Mandela received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and was inaugurated as President of South Africa in 1994. He is the author of the internationally bestselling autobiography Long Walk to Freedom and Conversations with Myself, a collection of his personal papers. Mandela died in December 2013.

About John Kani

John Kani is a South African actor, director, and playwright famous for both his writing and his dramatic performance. He won a Fleur du Cap Award for Nothing But the Truth, a play about the post-apartheid rift between those who had stayed in South Africa during the apartheid and those who returned only once it had ended. That same year, he was awarded an Obie for his extraordinary contributions to theater in the US. He has starred onstage in My Children My Africa! and The Tempest, and can be seen on screen in a variety of television shows and movies, such as Othello, An African Dream, Soweto Green, and Endgame. He narrated Conversations With Myself by Nelson Mandela.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Rohan on May 05, 2011

We all dream of fame at some time in our lives, yet the phrase that always returns to my mind is 'Walk A Mile In His Shoes.' How many would truly take the challenge of walking a mile in the shoes of Nelson Mandela? A man vilified and branded a terrorist by the propaganda of a regime. A man who lived......more

Goodreads review by Doug on January 26, 2011

It's a hard book to read without first knowing about the life of Nelson Mandela. Fifty pages into the book, I had to stop and read Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela before I could continue, and even then it is still hard to follow. Some of Nelson Mandela's letters are so bril......more

Goodreads review by B. P. on December 05, 2013

As this was my first autobiographical read of Nelson Mandela I was very impressed at this sort of behind the scenes, diarist style look into the world of a freedom fighter especially one of the greatest freedom fighters that ever lived. I know there are more conventional autobiographies and biograph......more

Goodreads review by Candleflame23 on March 19, 2018

. . ‏ بالبداية اعتقدت بأن الكتاب يمثل السيرة الذاتية للرجل الذي يعتبر أيقونة عالمية للمقاومة ورفض الإحتلال " نيلسون مانديلا " ولكن الكتاب لا يتعدى كونه مجرد ردود نيلسون مانديلا على الرسائل التي تلقاها خلال فترة سجنه والتي استمرت 26 سنة . ولذا فإن الكثير من القضايا التي تحدث عنها مانديلا كانت مجهولة ومبهمة......more

Goodreads review by Sotiris on March 12, 2019

I'm a bit harsh about this book but will not give it 5 stars just because is Mandela. Describes a more angry Mandela at the start, a more militant. That changed his mind and stated collaborated with the establishment. He was not a poor or uneducated man, but a man of lots of knowledge and of the upp......more

Quotes

“What emerges from these extraordinary fragments is a sort of scrapbook that offers a rare portrait of the real man behind the legend and visionary leader … John Kani, whose voice and delivery is uncannily close to Mandela's own, reads, making this Mandela mosaic come alive.” —BookPage

“…Kani reads with accented English that sounds similar to Mandela's own voice (heard in bonus interviews). Kani effectively makes transcribed interviews seem spontaneous as he appropriately interjects pauses and inflections…Choral and instrumental music from the Soweto region separate sections” —Booklist

“…the writings reveal a man thinking himself into the great statesman he became. His intellect, humor, and drive shine from his words.” —AudioFile

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