Tutu: The Authorised Portrait is a celebration of eighty years of the life of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an icon whose humanity and compassion have touched the lives of millions around the world.

Born in Klerksdorp, South Africa, and trained as a teacher because his family could not afford to send him to medical school, Desmond Tutu was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1960. He vigorously opposed apartheid and has dedicated his life to fighting all forms of oppression, advocating non-violence, peaceful reconciliation and social justice for all.

This extraordinary book features a biography by legendary South African journalist Allister Sparks, authorised by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and includes over forty interviews conducted by Tutu's daughter Reverend Mpho Tutu with close family, friends, colleagues, comrades and critics.

Complemented by an unprecedented collection of images and unpublished artefacts drawn from Tutu's private files, this is a phenomenal story of one man's life-long commitment to the liberation of the oppressed. Includes interviews with Kofi Annan, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President Barack Obama.

In "Beyond the Miracle," a distinguished South African journalist provides a wide-ranging and unflinching account of the first nine years of democratic government in South Africa. Covering both the new regime's proud achievements and its disappointing failures, Allister Sparks looks to South Africa's future, asking whether it can overcome its history and current global trends to create a truly nonracial, multicultural, and multiparty democracy.
Sparks sees South Africa as facing many of the same challenges as the rest of the world, especially a widening gap between rich and poor, exacerbated by the forces of globalization. While the transition government has done much to establish democracy and racial equality in a short time, as well as bring basic services such as clean water to millions who did not have them before, many blacks feel it has not done enough to redress the continuing imbalance of wealth in the country. Many whites, meanwhile, feel disempowered and confused about what role they have to play as a racial minority in a country they used to rule and regard as theirs by divine right. Sparks also covers other burning issues, such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic, high crime rates, the diamond wars, the Congo conflict, and the Zimbabwean land crisis.
Writing vividly and often quite movingly, Sparks draws on his decades of journalistic experience and his recent insider access to key figures in the liberation government to take stock of where South Africa has been, where it's going, and why the rest of the world should not turn away from this country where the First and Third Worlds meet. As Sparks persuasively argues, the success of Mandela's vision of a peaceful "rainbownation" is crucial not just for the salvation of Africa, but also for the world.

Allister Sparks joined his first newspaper at age 17 and was pitched headlong into the vortex of South Africa’s stormy politics. The Sword And The Pen is the story of how as a journalist he observed, chronicled and participated in his country’s unfolding drama for more than 66 years, covering events from the premiership of DF Malan to the presidency of Jacob Zuma, witnessing at close range the rise and fall of apartheid and the rise and crisis of the new South Africa.

In trenchant prose, Sparks has written a remarkable account of both a life lived to its full as well as the surrounding narrative of South Africa from the birth of apartheid, the rise of political opposition, the dawn of democracy, right through to the crisis we are experiencing today.

The companion to Allister Sparks's award-winning "The Mind of South Africa", this book is an account of the negotiating process that led to majority rule. It retells the story of the behind-the-scenes collaborations that started with a meeting between Kobie Coetsee, then Minister of Justice, and Nelson Mandela in 1985. By 1986, negotiations involved senior government officials, intelligence agents and the African National Congress. For the next four years, they assembled in places such as a gamepark lodge, the Palace Hotel in Lucerne, Switzerland, a fishing hideaway and even in a hospital room. All the while, De Klerk's campaign assured white constituents nothing would change. Sparks shows how the key players, who began with little reason to trust one another, developed friendships which would later play a crucial role in South Africa's struggle to end apartheid. Allister Sparks's "The Mind of South Africa" won South Africa's 1990 Sanlam Literary Award. Former correspondent for "The Washington Post", "The Observer" and Holland's leading newspaper, "NRC Handelsblad", Sparks was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1985.