Politician, campaigner, humanitarian, family man and descendent of the Thembu royal house, Nelson Mandela is, above all, remembered as one of the world’s great moral leaders. In Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela tells the story of his extraordinary life in his own words, from his childhood in the Eastern Cape, to his political awakening, activism and incarceration, and finally his release, 27 years later, into the dawn of a new South Africa in which he would play a pivotal role. Determined to help his country heal and look forward as a unified nation, Mandela was the leader South Africa had been waiting for, and whom the world embraced. His memoir is an extraordinary social and historical record of this turbulent time and one of the most important non-fiction works of the late 20th century.