Recommendations from our site
“Winnie and Nelson are heroic figures, but there’s a lot which is not at all heroic about them. It’s a ‘portrait of a marriage’, a very loaded phrase, because it’s warts and all. It’s warts which many historians had not talked or not known about, and previous biographers had left out (which just illustrates how biography is such a treacherous thing: it can be utterly misleading by omission). At the crudest level, we hear about the love affairs of both parties, the way in which they emotionally tried to cope against the crushing, evil machine that they were fighting. It’s both a history of South Africa with a freshness and a chilling detail that I hadn’t appreciated, but also makes one feel tremendously sorry for the two principal characters, in a Greek tragedy sort of way. Sometimes you’re just really cross with them. How could they end up doing such self-destructive things? In other words, the book brings the reader very close to two fascinating people who changed the world.” Read more...
The Best History Books of 2024: The Wolfson History Prize
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Theologians & Historians of Religion
“The author achieves incredible access to the inner workings of their relationship, thanks in part to the detailed transcripts prison guards took during Winnie’s visits to Nelson while he was imprisoned. That they exist at all offers some insight into the inhumanity of apartheid; the incredible cruelty suffered by Winnie and Nelson Mandela during their lives, drawn together in this impressive biography, offers yet more evidence.” Read more...
Award-Winning Biographies of 2024
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
