What insights did you gain about Winnie Madikizela-Mandela? A long-term prisoner cannot help but write self-revealing letters, no matter how guarded he tries to be he is attempting to keep his most cherished relationships alive through the words he puts down on the page he shows all of himself, everything.

Then there are the letters Winnie and Nelson wrote to one another during the years Nelson was in prison. I haven’t counted, but I think I interviewed about 150 people who knew them, starting with Winnie’s younger sisters and ending with people who were close to either or both of them at the end of their lives. So the idea is that the book is at once about a couple, a nation, and a series of ideas about freedom, forgiveness and vengeance. The premise of the book is that their marriage really does embody the tale of modern South Africa, but not as they intended. Winnie and Nelson were consummate performers who wanted the story of their marriage to tell the story of South Africa’s struggle for freedom. Jonny Steinberg, political scientist and award-winning author, answers six questions about his book. For her part Madikizela-Mandela was persecuted relentlessly by the white minority government as she organised the resistance.

Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years during apartheid and went on to become the country’s first democratic president. Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage is at once a double biography of South Africa’s two famous liberation leaders and a historical love story about their personal lives. A powerful new book on Nelson Mandela and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has just been published.

Nelson mandela book by kadir nelson