SOURCE: “Exile, Alienation and Literature: The Case of Es'kia Mphahlele,” in Africa Today, Vol. 33, No. 1, 1986, pp. 27-35.

In the following essay, Jarrett-Kerr discusses how much of Mphahlele's writing derives from his sense of exile and alienation.

Exile is a prime cause of alienation, and alienation is (surely) something to be deplored. The nineteenth-century psychotherapist was often called an “alienist.” “Alienation of the affections” seems at one time to have been an indictable offence within family case-law. And everywhere the song of the exile has been poignant:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn.(1) 

It is true that Dante, when exiled from his native Florence, put a brave face on it by claiming philosophically, “My country is the whole world.” And when his recall to Florence was offered him on...