Although better known for his critical essays and richly textured stories, Njabulo Simakahle Ndebele also addresses his core concerns in his poetry. In "The Revolution of the Aged," a poem featured in The Penguin Book of Southern African Verse (1989), Ndebele alludes to the impatient, angry young "who burned with scorn, / loaded with revolutionary maxims / hot for quick results," and remarks, "if you cannot master the wind, / flow with it / letting know all the time that you are resisting." In his most celebrated theoretical statement, "Turkish Tales and Some Thoughts on South African Fiction," reprinted in Rediscovery of the Ordinary: Essays on South African Literature and Culture (1991), the link between the sentiments expressed in the poem and Ndebele's critical perspective on South African writing is subtly made: "It seems clear, therefore, that it is humanly unrealistic to show a revolutionary hero, for example, who has no inner doubts. All...