Nelson Mandela was a most unusual and unusually astute leader, says journalist and author of Playing the Enemy, John Carlin. He chooses the best books to understand Nelson Mandela, who used forgiveness as a political tool, and South Africa, the country he brought peacefully out of apartheid.

The South African novelist gives us an unvarnished view of the writer’s life, and explains how literature told the story of apartheid and why comedy is the easiest way to talk about race

The journalist and author discusses five books with strikingly different interpretations of what it means to be South African today, whether black or white

The award-winning South African writer Kevin Bloom discusses five books that bring light to post-apartheid South Africa with focus on the predicament of the white South African. Do whites ‘deserve’ to feel at home in their country?

The award-winning novelist thinks Africans want to know how it is that white men have got their hands on all the money. He picks five books on what it means and meant to be white in Africa

World News Editor at the FT and Pulitzer Prize nominee discusses the struggles and triumphs of South Africa – the colonial scramble, the end of apartheid, Mbeki, Mandela and rugby, ANC corruption and more