Frankfurt - A future manuscript containing the diaries, letters and personal thoughts of South African liberation hero Nelson Mandela, 91, has been put up for sale at the Frankfurt Book Fair by his literary agent, a trade journal said Wednesday. Publishers are buying the 100,000-word manuscript sight unseen, said the website of the London-based publishing magazine The Bookseller.
The story, which spans Mandela's 27 years of imprisonment under white rulers and his five years as South African president, was dubbed "book of the fair" and is expected to be a best seller round the globe.
Key sales were secured in Frankfurt this week before the Book Fair opened on Wednesday morning, according to The Bookseller.
It named the negotiator on Mandela's behalf as Jonny Geller of the Curtis Brown literary agency. Pan Macmillan, the British unit of German publishing conglomerate Holtzbrinck, had bought the British rights for a "significant" sum, it added.
