Es'kia Mphahlele - University of Pretoria

ly. Mphahlele the young writer was part of the
firestorm of the 1960s in the company of
Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ngfigi wa
Thiong'o, and others. They burst onto the
international literary scene with an enviable
energy and engaged each other and the mainstream
literati in all manner of themes.
Mphahlele the firebrand lashed out at Negritude
for its simplistic reduction of the African
personality. He championed African culture
and the African's invigoration of the inherited
English idiom. But this energy often drew its
inspiration from exile and captured the pain
of those years where he and his wife adapted
to their new cultural environments, while their
children adopted the exile worlds. His novels
explore those tensions while his poetry and
short fiction rub the abrasive textures.
His retirement into rural South Africa
marks a strong contrast to the turbulent years
of his youth. As a young man he chafed under
the strictures of a fledgling apartheid era that
denied him the freedoms he required as a
creative writer. Twenty years of exile failed to
douse his fiery determination to return, and
he did so in 1978. In 1994, he cast his first vote
and saw the dawn of human dignity on his
ancestral soil.
His later writings turned from fiction to
social commentary in newspapers and magazines.
He focused his pen on community development
and founded the Council for Black
Education and Research in Soweto and a host
of reading clubs in Lebowa. He chaired the
University of Venda's council in the early
years out of Bantustan apartheid and served
on several community boards. In 1994, he and
his wife celebrated fifty years of marriage, only
a few miles from the now less fearful mountain
of his childhood. There the mighty waters of
Down Second Avenue's Leshoana River have
long dried up; the little schoolhouse where he
was pronounced "backward" sports a new
fence and newer classrooms.
The whirlwind brought him full circle and
left him time to ponder fresh themes and
sketch the plots of a new literature in a new
land - a new era that he helped found.
507 / ES'KIA MPHAHLELE
Selected Bibliography
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Woeber, Cathrine, and John Read, comps. Es'kia
Mphahlele: A Bibliography. Grahamstown,
South Africa: National English Literary Museum,
1989.
COLLECTED WORKS
Man Must Live, and Other Stories. Cape Town,
South Africa: African Bookman, 1946.
The Living and Dead, and Other Stories. Ibadan,
Nigeria: Ministry of Education, 1961.
In Corner B and Other Stories. Nairobi, Kenya:
East African Publishing House, 1967, 1972.
The Unbroken Song: Selected Writings of Es' kia
Mphahlele. Johannesburg, South Africa: Ravan
Press, 1981.
Renewal Time. Columbia, La.: Readers International,
1988.
SELECTED WORKS
Down Second Avenue. London: Faber & Faber,
1959, 1985.
The African Image. London: Faber & Faber, 1962.
Rev. ed., New York: Praeger, 1974.
The Wanderers. New York: Macmillan, 1971.
Repr. Cape Town, South Africa: David Philip,
1984.
Voices in the Whirlwind and Other Essays. New
York: Hill & Wang; London: Macmillan, 1972.
"The Return of Motalane." In Greenfield Review 5,
nos. 3/4 (1976- 1977).
Chirundu. Johannesburg, South Africa: Ravan
Press, 1979, 1994·
"Oganda's Journey." In Staffrider 2, no. 3 (1979).
Dramatization of a story by Grace Ogot.
Afrika My Music: An Autobiography, 1957-1983.
Johannesburg, South Africa: Ravan Press, 1984.
Father Come Home. Johannesburg, South Africa:
Ravan Press, 1984.
INTRODUCTIONS
Emergency. By Richard Rive. New York: Collier,
1970 .
Climbie. By Bernard Dadie. London: Heinemann
Educational Books, 1971.
Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services, 2011