Biography Essay

Peter Abrahams was the first black South African author to choose the padi of exile; he was the first to establish an international literary reputation; he was the first to publish a substantial body of novels in English; and his fiction and non-fiction commanded attention and respect throughout the English-speaking world in the 1940s and 1950s, especially among those interested in the historical and political development of Africa in general and South Africa in particular. Another reason for his importance was his profound influence on the next generation of African writers, partly because he exemplified for them the existence of the black person as writer and partly as a result of the themes he chose and the way he wrote about them. Among the founders of modern African fiction in English who have declared Abrahams a key influence on their work are Cyprian Ekwensi of Nigeria...