Conversations with Myself

Nelson Mandela's book Conversations With Myself is an unprecedented and official portrait of one of the great leaders of our time, with a foreword by President Barack Obama

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 brings, 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