"I WAS NOT BORN WITH A HUNGER TO BE FREE. I WAS BORN FREE": LONG WALK TO FREEDOM, SCARCE 1994 SOUTH AFRICAN FIRST EDITION INSCRIBED BY NELSON MANDELA

MANDELA, Nelson. Long Walk to Freedom. (Randburg, South Africa): Macdonald Purnell, (1994). Thick octavo, original black paper boards, cartographic endpapers, original dust jacket. $6500.

First South African edition of the stirring autobiography of the esteemed Nobel Peace Prize winner and South Africa's first black president, inscribed on the title page: "Best Wishes, N Mandela, 14-12-96."

"The Nelson Mandela who emerges from his memoir… is considerably more human than the icon of legend… Mandela is, on the evidence of his amazing life, neither a messiah nor a moralist nor really a revolutionary but a pragmatist to the core, a shrewd balancer of honor and interests. He is, to use a word unhappily fallen into disrepute, a politician, though one distinguished from lesser practitioners of his calling mainly by his unwavering faith in his ultimate objective, ending white minority rule" (New York Times). Stated "First Published in South Africa in 1994 by Macdonald Purnell (PTY) Ltd." on the copyright page. Editions were issued in the same year in England and the United States by Little, Brown and Company. Illustrated with 24 pages of black-and-white photographs.

Fine condition.