Your own life is difficult enough to live without having to try and make sense of someone else's. Just ask Daniel Browde who, acting on the much quoted entreaty by friends and family that someone should write down his grandfather's expertly told stories, spent over a decade struggling to figure out how to turn them into a biography.Jules Browde was born in 1919, grew up on the streets of Yeoville, fought in World War 2 and became a celebrated advocate and founding member of Lawyers for Human Rights. He was a champion of those oppressed by the apartheid regime who counted Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo among his many friends.He died at the age of 97 earlier this year shortly before his grandson's book, The Relatively Public Life of Jules Browde, was published. The book is worthy not only of the life it celebrates but also of the struggles of its writer to shape it into something far more nuanced, complex and affecting than a simple legal biography.It combines the elegantly crafted stories of his grandfather with a brutally honest account of the shifting emotional tides of his creative process and the effects of the project on their relationship in careful and considered prose.The grandson has created a richly rewarding and universally relevant examination of the complexities of a fundamental and multi-layered bond that incorporates the history and textures of a fascinating place and time. While those who knew Jules Browde might have wished for a more straightforward celebration of his unique life, they should appreciate how much more his grandson has done for both his grandfather and them.This is a book that works subtly on many levels - as the history of a man, the history of his family, the history of the place in which he lived and the effects of his enormous influence and embracing personality on those around him.There are shades of WG Sebald, Janet Malcolm and Mark Gevisser in Browde's approach but there is also something uniquely his own - a thoughtful and considered rumination on how stories are shaped over time and why they continue to influence the way we live our lives, long after those who told them to us have left us.Though it is sometimes tragic and poignant with the sharp recognition of difficult truths, it's also a story filled with wry humour and gently carefully observed humanity.As they say in Yiddish, it will provide plenty of naches (pride) to Browde's family who have waited so long for him to finish it and more than enough literary sophistication and finesse to those who don't know either the writer or his subject.'The Relatively Public Life of Jules Browde' by Daniel Browde is published by Jonathan Ball and is available at book stores for R260..