Novel
Mine Boy
Peter Abrahams · 1946
Synopsis
Xuma, penniless, comes from the northern countryside and arrives at Malay Camp, a poor district of Johannesburg, where Leah, who runs an illegal beer den, gives him a roof. He refuses to work for her and goes down the gold mine, where the miner Johannes and Paddy, an Irish foreman who makes him a team leader and treats him as an equal, make a place for him. He falls in love with Eliza, Leah's niece, a teacher who dreams of living like white people, while Maisy has loved him for a long time.
Context
The novel appeared in 1946, seven years after its author left for England; that year the South African press and radio counted it among the three books of the year. It portrays the city before apartheid, its suburbs, its illicit drinking dens and its mines. Recent criticism reads in it the urban space of a racist capitalism (Megan Jones), the illnesses and traumas born of the colonial regime (Sally-Anne Jackson), and notes its silence on the male couples of the migrant workers' camps (Claude J. Summers).
Who it is for
A novel in English, of direct realism, following a single character from the city to the mine and from the mine back to the city.
Prizes and reception
The first African novel in English to attract international attention, according to Kolawole Ogungbesan; translated into French in 1960.