Conversations With Myself by Mandela. Nelson ( 2010 )

Nelson Mandela was one of the twentieth century's most consequential figures, but Conversations With Myself offers something rarer than biography: the man in his own words, speaking to himself across decades. Drawn from private diaries, letters, notebooks, and recorded conversations assembled from Mandela's personal archive, the book traces the interior life of a man who spent twenty-seven years in prison and emerged not broken but deepened, capable of forgiveness that still astonishes. The material ranges from prison notebooks written in secret to reflections in old age on what he got right and what he wished he had done differently.

John Kani brings the voice of a fellow South African to the material, which matters considerably. His performance carries the gravity and warmth appropriate to Mandela's self-presentation, and he reads the more private passages with a respect for their vulnerability. At under ten hours, Conversations With Myself is a concise but moving portrait of a remarkable mind engaging honestly with its own history.