What We Are Reading Today: The Prison Letters of Mandela

This book confronts readers with the most direct evidence yet of Nelson Mandela’s intellectual evolution into one of the great moral heroes of our time.
Mandela was a former president of South Africa, the first to be elected in a fully representative democratic election, who held office from 1994 to 1999.
The book reveals the heroism of a man who refused to compromise his moral values in the face of extraordinary punishment. Ultimately, these letters position Mandela as one of the most inspiring figures of the 20th century.
The book was assembled over 10 years by Sahm Venter, a South African journalist and author, who obtained the letters from a variety of sources, among them a collection named for a policeman who, after Mandela’s release, returned notebooks confiscated from his cell in 1971 into which he had carefully copied his letters before passing them on to warders to be mailed.
According to a review published in the New York Times, many of the letters portray Mandela the loving husband and attentive father to five children — his three older ones by his first wife, Evelyn, and his two with his second wife, Winnie.
The letters make clear Mandela’s efforts to stay connected to his extended family, who sometimes consulted him on tribal matters.