Long Walk to Freedom

Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, recounts his life as a young political activist, prisoner, and central figure in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. In his autobiography, Mandela details his twenty-seven year imprisonment and fight against apartheid, while presenting a deeply personal narrative that echoes the larger anti-colonial struggle in South Africa. Long Walk to Freedom is Mandela’s personal history, but it is also the story of a nation’s fighting racism and colonialism. Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 foreshadowed the end of apartheid in 1991. Long Walk to Freedom was published only months before Mandela became South Africa’s first democratically elected president in 1994.

Nelson Mandela

Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1994.