Five top books on Mandela and South Africa

Adam Hochschild’s books include The Mirror at Midnight: A South African Journey, a portrait of the country near the end of the apartheid years. In June 2013 he came up with a recommended list of five books on Mandela and South Africa for the Washington Post. One title on the list:

After Mandela: The Struggle for Freedom in Post-Apartheid South Africa, by Douglas Foster (2012).

Penetrating and untainted by any mythmaking, this is by far the most interesting book about South Africa published in the past five or 10 years. An American, Foster managed to get deep into aspects of present-day South Africa that foreign correspondents seldom have time for, such as the life history and daily routine of a young Cape Town street criminal, the often-troubled lives of the new black elite’s children and grandchildren, and the sometimes bitter rivalries among black and brown South Africans.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue