"African Light Figure" was the name given to Nelson Mandela. Time magazine named him one of the twenty most important politicians of the 20th century. In 1993, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Stephan Bierling portrays the politician and revolutionary, but also the flesh-and-blood man who is now almost entirely obscured by his own myth. He skillfully and sensitively describes what drove Mandela, what he achieved, how he endured the long years of imprisonment unbowed, and ultimately how he became the moral authority of an entire era.