Perhaps this book will only carry a special appeal to South Africans, littered as it is with names which many would not have heard of outside of our country. But for anyone who wishes to understand the mental and physical journey of a great leader, this is the book.

Mandela writes with surprising candour about his inner feelings and insecurities, about how his ultimate destination as the hero of a nation arose as a mixture of fortune, circumstance and careful grooming from a young age. He takes the reader from his childhood in the Transkei through to his early adulthood as a lawyer in Johannesburg, through the Rivonia treason trials and on to Robben Island, where he wrote the bulk of this memoir. Although it leaves some important questions unanswered, I was fascinated to discover the roles that some South African political figures had played in the liberation and to see some of the nation's history through Mandela's unique perspective.