If anger, first-hand experience, outrage, compassion, and topicality were the sole requirements for great literature, The Wanderers might well be one of the masterpieces of this declining part of the twentieth century. Ezekiel Mphahlele has been there and knows and cares. He is in charge of his emotions and convictions, and ofay doubters can step aside….

But passionate involvement is simply not enough in itself, at least for fiction. What is sadly missing here is firm narrative line, convincing and full development of character, structural control. The reader wants very much to be swept along by the sheer urgency of subject and theme, to care deeply about teacher-journalist Timi Tabane and his family and friends, to read for more than information about what is still an exotic country to most Americans. And there is a lot to admire here: harrowing scenes of farm prison-labor in South Africa; hard...