SOURCE: A review of The African Image, in Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. I, No. 1, March, 1963, pp. 117-18.

In the following review, Creighton complains that Mphahlele's The African Image is a “rather foggy, disproportioned and untidy parcel of interesting reflections.”

I know the most hideous crime in a reviewer is to review a book his author did not write instead of the one he did. But I honestly do not believe, after much thought, that [The African Image] is the book Ezekiel Mphahlele meant to write. No one of his insight, sensibility, literary distinction, and critical penetration can have meant to give us this rather foggy, disproportioned and untidy parcel of interesting reflections. I think he wanted to write three books: one on the social and political phenomenon of African nationalism; one on literature in Africa; and an autobiography of his own adventures in what he calls...