Long Walk to Freedom is an autobiography by South Africa's first democratically elected President Nelson Mandela, and it was first published in 1994 by Little Brown & Co.[1][2] The book profiles his early life, coming of age, education and 27 years spent in prison.

Under the apartheid government, Mandela was regarded as a terrorist and jailed on Robben Island for his role as a leader of the then-outlawed African National Congress (ANC) and its armed wing the Umkhonto We Sizwe.

[6] In the first part of the autobiography, Mandela describes his upbringing as a child and adolescent in South Africa and being connected to the royal Thembu dynasty.

His 28-year tenure in prison was marked by the cruelty of Afrikaner guards, backbreaking labour, and sleeping in minuscule cells which were nearly uninhabitable.

Unlike his biographer Anthony Sampson, Mandela does not accuse the warder James Gregory of fabricating a friendship with his prisoner.

[8] In Long Walk to Freedom Mandela remarks of Gregory only that 'I had not known him terribly well, but he knew us, because he had been responsible for reviewing our incoming and outgoing mail.

[13] A follow-up memoir was published in 2017, compiled by Mandla Langa from Mandela's handwritten notes and unfinished draft, together with archive material and with a prologue by Graça Machel: entitled Dare Not Linger: The Presidential Years, this volume took its title from the closing sentence of Long Walk to Freedom: "But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.