Walter & Albertina Sisulu In Our Time - Elinor Sisulu with Foreword by Nelson Mandela

In Our Time - Elinor Sisulu  - David Philip - 2002, first edition - 448pp, index, black & white Photographs - Hardcover and dustcover in good condition - Internally clean and tightly bound.

The story of the Sisulus combines the personal and the political; it reflects the 20th-century history of South Africa, but at the same time it is, as their biographer puts it, "a story of persecution, bitter struggle and painful separation … and also one of patience, hope, enduring love and ultimate triumph".

Walter was a dapper, sophisticated estate agent and Albertina a naïve and beautiful young nurse when they met in Johannesburg in the early 1940s. At their wedding in 1944, the chairman of the African National Congress Youth League warned the bride: "You are marrying a man who is already married to the nation."

Their life together was marked by frequent arrests and detentions as Walter Sisulu led campaigns to defy apartheid laws. ANC secretary-general, he had been jailed more than once when he went underground in 1963. Albertina and their eldest son were detained by police frustrated in their attempts to find Walter.

He was arrested with other ANC leaders during a raid at Liliesleaf Farm later that year, and given a life sentence for treason, and Albertina was left with five children, plus her late sister's two children, to rear on her own.

Active in ANC Women's League affairs and, in the 1980s, co-president of the United Democratic Front, she was banned for nearly two decades, and often jailed, and two of her children went into exile. They returned only after liberation movements were unbanned in 1990, several months after Walter Sisulu was released from Robben Island.

Those are the bare bones of the story; but in this rich, well-written biography are also reflected the political debates and campaigns that characterised the liberation struggle - recounted by an author who had unprecedented access to letters, reports and other private and political documents.