About the Event
We open our Saturday sessions for the Mandurah Readers & Writers Festival with the fascinating story of Peter Friedland’s life & career in South Africa and his encounters with the iconic Nelson Mandela. Peter will discuss his book Quiet Time with the President, in conversation with Anne Louise Willoughby.
The Readers’ and Writers’ Festival is an annual adult literature event presented by City of Mandurah Library Services. In 2025 it will be held from 16 – 18 January at the Seashells Resort Mandurah. The aim of the festival is to foster a love of reading and literature and encourage creativity in our community. This year the festival brings together an array of established and emerging storytellers from across Western Australia. The free to attend three-day festival includes author talks, and panel discussions.
Peter Friedland
Professor Peter Friedland is a leading ear, nose and throat surgeon in Australia 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 ENT at the University Witwatersrand Donald Gordon Medical Centre.
Quiet Time with the President: A Doctor’s story about learning to listen
One Sunday in 2001 Dr Peter Friedland received an unexpected call. Nelson Mandela was struggling to hear. Could Peter, an ear, nose and throat specialist visit him at home
Peter discovered Mandela was using antiquated hearing aids and struggling to maintain them. Soon he became a regular visitor to Mandela’s home where he experienced the statesman alone, in the frailty of old age. He was unsentimental and full of stories, each one bearing a lesson.
With South Africa in the grip of a hijacking epidemic, Peter often found himself moving between Mandela’s tranquil house and the commotion of the emergency room, where he operated as a head and neck trauma surgeon on folk who had been shot through their car windows.
In this book, he explores the forces that drive people out of South Africa and then pull them back, until something snaps. Peter encountered violence on the streets, it entered his home, and when another close friend bled-out in his arms, he snapped.
Telling his famous patient that he was leaving for Australia was insurmountably difficult, but Mandela surprised him. He had made a monumental mistake in Australia some 20 years earlier and warned Peter to learn from this.
Soon after arriving in Perth, Peter was told Australians think multiculturalism is inviting people to the party, however, it’s a long time before they ask you to dance. After a few stumbles, he found himself on the dance floor.
Anne Louise Willoughby
Anne Louise holds a PhD in Creative Writing in the genre of Biography from the University of Western Australia and teaches in the School of Humanities’ Creative Writing program. Anne-Louise is the author of the biography Nora Heysen: A Portrait published by Fremantle Press in 2019. She lives in Fremantle, Western Australia.
What to Expect:
9.30am: In Conversation
10.15am: Q & A
10.30am: Book signing
Tea & Coffee provided.
Festival Bookseller is Dymocks Busselton
Places are limited. Bookings required. Book Now!
