Mine Boy: 'One of my all-time favourite novels' (Tsitsi Dangarembga)

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'One of my all-time favourite novels.' Tsitsi Dangarembga 'The first African novel in English to draw international attention.' New York Times'The forerunner of an entire school of African literary art.' Sunday Times And the black man and the white were like two men alone in the world .... Xuma will never forget the day he arrived in the Johannesburg slums: the charismatic woman who takes him in, the brutal police raids, the fights, friendships, dancing, drinking and romances - yet it soon feels like home. But when he becomes a leader in the city's gold mines, he is shocked by the racist treatment of the labourers. And as he begins to question whether 'man could be without colour', Xuma stages an act of defiance that changes his life forever . . . In 1946, Peter Abrahams' classic novel Mine Boy exposed South Africa's fledgling racial apartheid system and townships to the world - and its wisdom, vividness and political power endures to this day.

Peter Abrahams was born in Vrededorp, near Johannesburg, in 1919. His Ethiopian father worked in the gold mines; his mother was the daughter of a black African father and white French mother, classifying Abrahams as 'coloured'. After his father's death, he had an impoverished childhood, selling firewood and working for a tinsmith, but won a scholarship to school. In 1939, Abrahams left South Africa for European exile, writing for the Communist Daily Worker, befriending political activists and organising the Fifth Pan-African Congress. His first book was published in 1942, followed by ten volumes of trailblazing fiction and autobiography exposing racial injustice. He settled in Jamaica in 1956 where he lived until his death aged 97, writing and broadcasting radio commentaries; he was married twice, both to white Englishwomen, and had three children.

"The first African novel in English to draw international attention." -- New York Times "An African writer, a writer of the world, who opened up in his natal country, South Africa, a path of exploration for us, the writers who have followed the trail he bravely blazed." -- Nadine Gordimer