Quiet Time with the President: A Doctor's Story about Learning to Listen – Peter Friedland with Jill Margo
Peter Friedland unpacks his book 'Quiet Time with the President: A Doctor's Story about Learning to Listen' (Camera: Nicholas Boyd; Editing: Darlene Creamer)
After many years of serving the country, Dr Peter Friedland was given an opportunity to become a member of Nelson Mandela’s medical team, charged with looking after his hearing.
Mandela was in his post-presidential years and over time, a rapport built between the two men. Their conversations often veered towards politics with Mandela carefully shifting Peter's perspective or quietly prompting him to re-examine his position.
As an ENT specialist, Peter spent many years treating victims of violent crime. This experience of trauma built incrementally, as he continued to lose colleagues and close friends to hijackings and assaults. His own family endured violence too, and eventually fear for his children's safety drove him towards making a life-changing decision.
Through simply sitting with, and talking to Mandela, Peter understood that when people make hard decisions, these never come cheap. His story beautifully captures the tension between an uncertain future, out of one’s control, and the fear that one might not thrive, let alone survive in a new land.
This book examines the powerful forces that push people away from South Africa and then pull them back. They find themselves in an emotional tug-of-war that continues, until something snaps.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Professor Peter Friedland is a leading ear, nose and throat surgeon and holds the academic chair in this discipline in Western Australia. Most of his career was spent in South Africa, where he was clinical head of the department of ENT at the University of the Witwatersrand Donald Gordon Medical Centre.
Jill Margo is a best-selling author specialising in biography, memoir and health. Her books have been translated into three languages. She is also a multi-award-winning journalist on The Australian Financial Review.
'Quiet Time with the President: A Doctor's Story about Learning to Listen' is published by Jonathan Ball Publishers
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