South Africa · Memoir
Down Second Avenue
Mphahlele recalls growing up in segregated South Africa, describing childhood, family life and the struggle to make a living under poverty and police surveillance. Daily experience, rather than a distant overview, gives the country its shape.
First published in 1959 and banned in South Africa, the memoir follows the making of a writer in a society determined to restrict his possibilities. It brings the reader close to the routines, pressures and relationships through which political injustice becomes personal, offering a lived counterpoint to the country’s great historical novels.
“If Nelson Mandela is our political star, Mphahlele was his literary equivalent.”
Barney Mthombothi, The Star, quoted by Penguin Random House
Apartheid; Childhood; Poverty; Education; Writing; Family