SOURCE: A review of Chirundu, in African Literature Today, Heinemann, 1983, pp. 233-37.

In the following review, Frank compares Mphahlele's Chirundu to Stephen Gray’s Caltrop’s Desire, asserting that Chirundu“is a compelling, if slightly uneven, success.”

Both Caltrop's Desire and Chirundu are by South African writers, but with that said, we exhaust all points of similarity between the two novels. In fact, despite their shared origin and contemporaneity, the two books could scarcely be less alike. Caltrop's Desire is by a white South African[, Stephen Gray,] while Chirundu is by a black; Caltrop's Desire is set in the colonial era that spans the Boer War to the Second World War, while Chirundu is set for the most part in a post-independent African state; Caltrop's Desire strains after a rather brittle, self-consciously clever satire while Chirundu deftly combines epic, lyrical and tragic elements in a manner that recalls...