Geller brings Mandela diaries to Frankfurt 'auction'
14.10.09 Benedicte Page in The Bookseller

Jonny Geller of Curtis Brown is bringing the book of the fair to Frankfurt‚ Nelson Mandela‚'s unseen diaries, letters, and personal thoughts spanning his lifetime including his 27 years of imprisonment and five years as South African president.

A "select auction" for the 100,000-word title was held on the eve of the fair with Pan Macmillan buying UK rights for a "significant" sum. Geller said that since sending out the book on Friday (9th October) there had been an "amazing" response with offers "in play" in the US, Denmark, Israel, Portugal, Italy and Holland. Geller is handling worldwide rights to the book on behalf of New Zealand-based packager P Q Blackwell, a previous publisher of Mandela, who approached Geller to agent the book after Mandela bestowed his entire archive on the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Geller said: "What is so amazing is that he wrote virtually every day of his life and kept all his notes. The book reveals the personal cost to him of his imprisonment on Robben Island and includes heartbreaking letters about the deaths of two of his children. It shows the personal side of this icon, his amazing humanity and wisdom. It is also a historical document which may bring about different interpretations of various events."
Conversations with Myself will be published globally in the autumn of 2010, 20 years after Mandela's release from prison. Jon Butler, non-fiction publisher at Pan Macmillan, said the company was "honoured at the prospect of taking Nelson Mandela's inspiring philosophy to a new generation of readers". Sales of Mandela's 1994 autobiography Long Walk to Freedom (1994) are estimated at six million worldwide. In the UK the book has never dropped out of Nielsen BookScan's weekly top 5,000 listing. It has spent 722 consecutive weeks in this weekly bestseller list, and is one of just 12 titles (known as "evergreens") that has achieved the feat.
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