Peter Abrahams is a South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

n novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

ist.

His father was from Ethiopia and his mother was classified by South Africa as a mixed race person, a "Kleurling" or Coloured

Coloured

In the South African, Namibian, Zambian, Botswana and Zimbabwean context, the term Coloured refers to an heterogenous ethnic group who possess ancestry from Europe, various Khoisan and Bantu tribes of Southern Africa, West Africa, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaya, India, Mozambique,...

. He was born in Vrededorp, nearby Johannesburg, but left South Africa in 1939. He worked first as a sailor, and then as a journalist in London, at which time, he lived with his wife, Daphne, at Loughton

Loughton

Loughton is a town and civil parish in the Epping Forest district of Essex. It is located between 11 and 13 miles north east of Charing Cross in London, south of the M25 and west of the M11 motorway and has boundaries with Chingford, Waltham Abbey, Theydon Bois, Chigwell and Buckhurst Hill...

. Whilst in London, he met several important black leaders and writers, such as Jomo Kenyatta. He then settled in Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

 in 1956.

One of South Africa's most prominent writers, his work deals with political and social issues, especially with racism

Racism

Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

. His novel, Mine Boy (1946), one of the first works to bring him to critical attention, and his memoir Tell Freedom (1954) deal in part with apartheid. His other works include the story collection Dark Testament (1942) and the novels The Path of Thunder (1948), A Wreath for Udomo (1956), A Night of Their Own (1965), the Jamaica-set This Island Now (1966, the only one of his novels not set in Africa) and The View from Coyaba (1985). He also wrote This Island Now, which speaks to the ways power and money can change most people's perspectives.

Works

• Dark Testament (1942)
• Song of the City (1945) 179p, novel, published by Dorothy Crisp
  Dorothy Crisp
  - Biography :Born in Leeds 17 May 1906, she became a public speaker and writer on nationalism, contributing to the National Review in the 1920s. Among her books were The Rebirth of Conservatism and Why we Lost Singapore . She was a British political commentator with contacts in high places at the...
  
  & Co Ltd London
• Mine Boy (1946) published by Dorothy Crisp & Co Ltd London -his seminal novel, the first author to bring the horrific reality of South Africa's apartheid system of racial discrimination to international attention.
• The Path of Thunder (1948)
• Wild Conquest (1950)
• Return to Goli (1953)
• Tell Freedom (1954)
• A Wreath for Udomo (1956)
• A Night of Their Own (1965)
• This Island Now (1966)
• The View from Coyaba (1985)
• The Black Experience in the 20th Century: An Autobiography and Meditation (2000)