Mine Boy

This novel was one of the first books to draw attention to the condition of black South Africans under a white regime. Abraham's forceful but restrained images of discrimination in the gold mines, the appalling housing, and a country boy's simple and humanitarian act of defiance have struck a chord around the world, making Mine Boy a central influence on South African fiction of over forty years..

Peter Abrahams was born in 1919 in Johannesburg, South Africa, attended St Peter's College in South Africa and then went to sea for two years as a stoker during the WWII before settling in Britain. There he joined the editorial staff of the communist newspaper, 'The Daily Worker' and began to write in earnest. Abrahams finally settled in Jamaica, in 1957 with his wife and family where he became editor of the West Indian Economist, a commentator on Jamaica's radio and television and a radio news network controller of West Indian News.

His collection of short stories Dark Testament (1942) was followed by the publication of his first novel, Mine Boy (1946), which established Abrahams as an important novelist. He has since published eight works: Song of the City (1945), Path of Thunder (1948), Wild Conquest (1950), A Wreath for Vdomo (1956), A Night of their Own (1965), This Island Now (1966), the autobiographical Tell Freedom: Memories of Africa (1954), and an essay Return to Goli (1953).