‘You will be able to pay me a visit in 1975, when you will have turned 16, but I am growing impatient, and the coming five years feel longer than eternity.’

The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela is a landmark work: the first, and only, authorised and authenticated collection of correspondence spanning the 27 years Mandela was held as a political prisoner.

On 12 June 1964 anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

He was taken to the notorious maximum-security prison on Robben Island, off the coast of Cape Town. Subjected to dehumanising conditions.

Shut off from the world, he was limited to writing and receiving one letter every six months.

Listen to a 1971 letter to his daughter Zenani Mandela-Dlamini, read by his granddaughter, Swati Mandela:

https://www.facebook.com/PenguinRandomHouseSA/videos/1502317239872866/

 

Poignant, impassioned, gripping, and always inspirational, the letters in The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela – many of them never seen by the public – have been assembled from the collections held by the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the South African National Archives among others.

The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela is a testament of Madiba’s defiance and his resolve.

• Now available at leading bookstores countrywide and online!

From The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela by Nelson Mandela. Copyright © 2018 by the Estate of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela and the Nelson Mandela Foundation, images copyright © the individual photographers as noted.

 

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