Mandela - Softcover

Sampson, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007437978 ISBN 13: 9780007437979

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011

Synopsis

In addition to covering his years before, during and after his incarceration, the author assesses Mandela's impact as President on South Africa and the world.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Nelson Mandela, who emerged from twenty-six years of political imprisonment to lead South Africa out of apartheid and into democracy, is perhaps the world's most admired leader, a man whose life has been led with exemplary courage and inspired conviction.
Now Anthony Sampson, who has known Mandela since 1951 and has been a close observer of South Africa's political life for the last fifty years, has produced the first authorized biography, the most informed and comprehensive portrait to date of a man whose dazzling image has been difficult to penetrate. With unprecedented access to Mandela's private papers (including his prison memoir, long thought to have been lost), meticulous research, and hundreds of interviews--from Mandela himself to prison warders on Robben Island, from Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo to Winnie Mandela and F. W. de Klerk, and many others intimately connected to Mandela's story--Sampson has composed an enlightening and necessary story of the man behind the myth.

About the Author:

Anthony Sampson began his career as a journalist in South Africa after a brief post-war spell as a naval officer and a degree in English at Oxford University. He became editor of the new black magazine Drum in Johannesburg in 1951, where he remained for four years, establishing it as the leading black literary and political periodical in South Africa, and getting to know most of the prominent black leaders including Luthuli, Mandela, Sisulu and Tambo. He wrote his first book, Drum, about his experiences.He returned to London in 1955 to join the Observer newspaper as assistant to the editor, where he remained on the staff, with frequent assignments in South Africa, until 1961 when he wrote his landmark book Anatomy of Britain, which sold 200,000 copies in hardback in the UK alone. He followed this with The New Europeans which was translated in twelve languages, and became a full-time book-writer and broadcaster, travelling widely. He then wrote successive books about multinational corporations, including The Seven Sisters and Arms Bazaar (both translated into twenty languages), followed by a much-acclaimed international TV series The Midas Touch about the global marketplace.In 1985-6 he returned to South Africa to write Black and Gold: Tycoons, Revolutionaries and Apartheid. He was then banned from returning until January 1990, when his revisit coincided with Mandela's release. Since then he has returned frequently, and is now on the international board of Independent Newspapers, the biggest newspaper group in South Africa.Anthony Sampson has been chairman of the Society of Authors and a member of the Scott Trust which owns the Guardian and the Observer. He lives in London and Wiltshire with his wife Sally, a magistrate with whom he has two children.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0007437978
• ISBN 13: 9780007437979
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 704