SOURCE: A review of African Writing Today, in Africa Today, Vol. 14, No. 5, October, 1967, pp. 34-5.

In the following review, Povey praises Mphahlele's African Writing Today, asserting, “Certainly no editor has managed through the inevitable compromises of selection, to survey African writing more fully than this humane writer and distinguished critic.”

Several editors have tried to encompass within a short anthology the range of contemporary writing from the African continent. Ezekiel Mphahlele, himself a well-known South African author, has managed, as well as anyone, to suggest within the narrow confines of a single volume, the variety and quality of the African writers' achievement [in African Writing Today]. The editor draws solely upon writing in the European languages and along with the English work he includes French, and the lesser-known Portuguese authors in translation. Prose predominates over poetry and he decides to include examples of the work of the major...