Ezekiel Mphahlele Critical Essay | Critical Review by Mercedes Mackay

Critical Review by Mercedes Mackay

SOURCE: A review of Down Second Avenue, in African Affairs, Vol. 59, No. 235, April, 1960, p. 167.

In the following review, Mackay praises Mphahlele's Down Second Avenue for its powerful story and characterizations.

[Down Second Avenue] is a powerful and pathetic book, explaining the degradation of Apartheid as only an African writer could do. I had always comfortably thought that the lot of a herd boy in a South African village must be preferable to that of a schoolboy in the terrible slums near Pretoria. This living description of both shows me that I am wrong. There is less cynicism in the village, but more superstition, fewer bedbugs but more lice, more milk but less medicine. Both are terrible pictures, described almost aloofly, without self pity or reproach, and with deadly truth.

Shining out of the horror are the magnificent characterisations of this gifted writer. There is Aunt Dora...
(read more)