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jd_jessica's review against another edition
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
kaimo007's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
slow-paced
3.5
Should have been two volumes- one of the letters he wrote regarding mistreatment/his trial and one to his friends/family regarding all his condolences to the people who died. Editor suuuucked
onar's review against another edition
i’m coming back for you baby. I’M COMING BACK FOR YOU
nanibanani17's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.25
shadira78's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Nelson Mandela’s letters from prison seem to demand a spoiler alert. We know how this epic turns out – but the uncanny thing about reading this selection of close-written correspondence is the unavoidable sense that its author always knew the ending in advance, too.
Mandela was born a century ago this week. The conviction that his story would make history, that it would have a triumphant last act of truth and reconciliation, hardly ever appears to have faltered within him. Not when the judge sentenced him to life imprisonment at the end of the Rivonia trial in 1964. Not when the door slammed behind him aged 45 as prisoner 466/64 in an 8ft by 7ft cell on Robben Island, his home for 18 years. Not even when, in 1969, his eldest son, Thembi, was killed in a car crash – a tragedy that followed less than a year after the death of Mandela’s mother – and he was refused permission to attend the funeral (just as he had been his mother’s)
ven in the knowledge that he was often writing into darkness, he kept up that most reasonable and patient of voices – rarely acknowledging anger, even less despair. The philosophy of “living in truth” is more readily associated with that other great prison correspondent Václav Havel, the sense that power lay in acting as far as possible as if the hated regime did not exist. Mandela clearly understood the force of that idea. In his letters he is at pains to inhabit his roles as father and husband and son and uncle and friend, just as surely as if he were a free man. That tone, which implied an otherworldly patience, no doubt spooked his prison warders as much as anything.
As Mandela emphasises from time to time, it would have been a mistake to confuse that tone with the reality of his life on Robben Island, a large part of which involved sitting in the prison yard smashing rocks to gravel with a hammer. The letters were not a reflection of that world, they were his escape from it. For the duration of the time in which his sentences carefully unspooled through their clauses he could forget about that other life sentence. In 1976, 14 years after he was first imprisoned, he suggested, again to his wife, that the hours in which he wrote “were the only time I ever feel that some day in the future it’ll be possible for humanity to produce saints who will really be inspired in everything they do by genuine love for humanity”. Mandela’s written rhetoric was so seductive, even he was in thrall to it
Mandela was born a century ago this week. The conviction that his story would make history, that it would have a triumphant last act of truth and reconciliation, hardly ever appears to have faltered within him. Not when the judge sentenced him to life imprisonment at the end of the Rivonia trial in 1964. Not when the door slammed behind him aged 45 as prisoner 466/64 in an 8ft by 7ft cell on Robben Island, his home for 18 years. Not even when, in 1969, his eldest son, Thembi, was killed in a car crash – a tragedy that followed less than a year after the death of Mandela’s mother – and he was refused permission to attend the funeral (just as he had been his mother’s)
ven in the knowledge that he was often writing into darkness, he kept up that most reasonable and patient of voices – rarely acknowledging anger, even less despair. The philosophy of “living in truth” is more readily associated with that other great prison correspondent Václav Havel, the sense that power lay in acting as far as possible as if the hated regime did not exist. Mandela clearly understood the force of that idea. In his letters he is at pains to inhabit his roles as father and husband and son and uncle and friend, just as surely as if he were a free man. That tone, which implied an otherworldly patience, no doubt spooked his prison warders as much as anything.
As Mandela emphasises from time to time, it would have been a mistake to confuse that tone with the reality of his life on Robben Island, a large part of which involved sitting in the prison yard smashing rocks to gravel with a hammer. The letters were not a reflection of that world, they were his escape from it. For the duration of the time in which his sentences carefully unspooled through their clauses he could forget about that other life sentence. In 1976, 14 years after he was first imprisoned, he suggested, again to his wife, that the hours in which he wrote “were the only time I ever feel that some day in the future it’ll be possible for humanity to produce saints who will really be inspired in everything they do by genuine love for humanity”. Mandela’s written rhetoric was so seductive, even he was in thrall to it
zohal99's review against another edition
5.0
First five-star book of 2019 and it's non-fiction. :)
There is something profoundly different reading the prison letters of Nelson Mandela versus when I read his autobiography. The difference is that this feels even more raw/real. It was not as though Nelson Mandela knew that his letters would ever be published.
I cannot get over his sheer determination. He stuck to his Law studies, which took him 45 years to complete because he was in prison during that time and suffered through a lot of health complications. I honestly felt like I gained new insight into Nelson Mandela just by the way he composes himself in his letters; determined, optimistic, respectful, uncompromising in his beliefs. There are a vast array of them, from those sent to his family, requests that he sent to commanding prison officers, requests he sent to the university he was studying at via correspondence and more.
Truly a visionary!
There is something profoundly different reading the prison letters of Nelson Mandela versus when I read his autobiography. The difference is that this feels even more raw/real. It was not as though Nelson Mandela knew that his letters would ever be published.
I cannot get over his sheer determination. He stuck to his Law studies, which took him 45 years to complete because he was in prison during that time and suffered through a lot of health complications. I honestly felt like I gained new insight into Nelson Mandela just by the way he composes himself in his letters; determined, optimistic, respectful, uncompromising in his beliefs. There are a vast array of them, from those sent to his family, requests that he sent to commanding prison officers, requests he sent to the university he was studying at via correspondence and more.
Truly a visionary!
zoey1999's review against another edition
5.0
First five-star book of 2019 and it's non-fiction. :)
There is something profoundly different reading the prison letters of Nelson Mandela versus when I read his autobiography. The difference is that this feels even more raw/real. It was not as though Nelson Mandela knew that his letters would ever be published.
I cannot get over his sheer determination. He stuck to his Law studies, which took him 45 years to complete because he was in prison during that time and suffered through a lot of health complications. I honestly felt like I gained new insight into Nelson Mandela just by the way he composes himself in his letters; determined, optimistic, respectful, uncompromising in his beliefs. There are a vast array of them, from those sent to his family, requests that he sent to commanding prison officers, requests he sent to the university he was studying at via correspondence and more.
Truly a visionary!
There is something profoundly different reading the prison letters of Nelson Mandela versus when I read his autobiography. The difference is that this feels even more raw/real. It was not as though Nelson Mandela knew that his letters would ever be published.
I cannot get over his sheer determination. He stuck to his Law studies, which took him 45 years to complete because he was in prison during that time and suffered through a lot of health complications. I honestly felt like I gained new insight into Nelson Mandela just by the way he composes himself in his letters; determined, optimistic, respectful, uncompromising in his beliefs. There are a vast array of them, from those sent to his family, requests that he sent to commanding prison officers, requests he sent to the university he was studying at via correspondence and more.
Truly a visionary!
impavid's review against another edition
4.0
This book gives great insight into Nelson Mandela. For me being someone who loves biography, history and science, this was a refreshing read. Books which are collection of letters, are typically hard to read and tedious at best. Compared to Jawaharlal Nehru's book "Letters from a father to his daughter", this has a more humane feel and less nostalgia. The environments in which these letters were written though similar, Mandela letters are starkly different because these letters were written from within the confines of a prison.
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