Author John Carlin
Excerpt from original interview with John Carlin for www.sitges4u.com
How would you describe Playing the Enemy to someone who has not read any of your previous novels?
Everyone takes it as given, pretty much, that Nelson Mandela is a great man. But think that few people actually know why he is great. People generally know that he came out of prison after a long time and was very generous and didn’t show any rancour towards the authorities and that’s the sum of most people’s knowledge about him.
I’ve tried in the book to go into some detail about him through what I like to think is a cracking good yarn.
A story that rattles along and, hopefully, keeps people turning the page almost without noticing that I am giving them a lesson on why it is that Mandela is such a great man. Such a unique man. The secret is that he is a brilliant politician, which means that he is a great seducer! I proposed to my American publisher, who were the first to publish the book, that we might want to titlel the book “The Great Seducer” but they said, being rather literal, that people might assume that it was a sex book and that would not be a good idea.
But the amazing thing about Mandela is his ability to win over absolutely everybody. Be it in private, one to one, or be it a whole country. I think the single most astonishing thing about Mandela was that he came out of prison in 1990, regarded by the majority of white people in South Africa as the great terrorist in chief, as South Africa’s Osama Bin Laden, and 5 years later at the Rugby World Cup final, pretty much the whole of white South Africa fell at his knees, and crowned him King. What happened in those intervening five years, and how he won over even his bitterest enemies, is the story of my book.
You can read the entire exclusive interview at the Sitges Guide, www.sitges4u.com
