[Ezekiel Mphahlele] writes a clear and serviceable, if unexciting—and sometimes too baldly didactic—prose, has a zest and a fair talent for the creation of a wide variety of characters from all races, and an occasional flair for narrative suspense which gives his story pace. Yet [The Wanderers], if always authentic and well-meant, remains too ordinary to make much that is new out of his range of bitter, touching or ironical experiences.

It gets off to a good enough start…. But two-thirds of this long novel of repression, discontent and wandering seem diffuse in their sheer documentary attention to political and racial situations. The Wanderers is too skilled and varied to be any kind of manifesto, but the novel interest—plot and character, insight into inward experience—loses the contest with the author's desire to render African realities with the very fidelity in which he excels.

"African...