A collection of essays celebrating the centenaries of Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Nyembezi and Es’kia Mphahlele, all born in South Africa in 1919. These foundational writers produced fiction, criticism, journalism and life writing, and their oeuvres are crucial to the genealogies of modern African and diasporic black literature.

List of illustrations
Foreword – Simon Gikandi
Acknowledgements
Tribute to Professor Bhekizizwe Peterson – Jill Bradbury, Khwezi Mkhize and Makhosazana Xaba

Introduction – Bhekizizwe Peterson, Khwezi Mkhize and Makhosazana Xaba

Part I: Remapping and Rereading African Literature and Cultural Production
Chapter 1 Foundational Writers and the Making of African Literary Genealogy: Es’kia Mphahlele and Peter Abrahams – James Ogude
Chapter 2 Foundational African Literary Discourse and Dimensions of Authority – Obi Nwakanma
Chapter 3 Situating Sibusiso Nyembezi in African Literary History – Sikhumbuzo Mngadi
Chapter 4 A Footnote and a Pioneer: Noni Jabavu’s Legacy – Athambile Masola
Chapter 5 ‘Navigations of Tyranny’: Reconsidering Es’kia Mphahlele’s Writing – Crain Soudien
Chapter 6 Noni Jabavu and the Sensibilities of Early Black Educated Elites – Hugo Canham

Part II: South Africa and Fugitive Imaginaries
Chapter 7 (Un)Homing and the Uncanny: The (Auto)Biographical Es’kia Mphahlele – Thando Njovane
Chapter 8 In the Shadows of the British Empire: Nyembezi’s Inkinsela YaseMngungundlovu – Innocentia J. Mhlambi
Chapter 9 Escaping Apartheid: Race, Education and Cultural Exchange, 1955–2003 – Anne-Maria Makhulu
Chapter 10 Photographing Home Life in Alexandra between the 1930s and the 1970s – Thuto Thipe
11 Down Avenues of (Un)Learning: Reading, Writing and Being – Jill Bradbury

Part III: In the Eye of the Short Century: Diaspora and pan-Africanism Reconsidered
Chapter 12 Es’kia Mphahlele and the Question of the Aesthetic – Khwezi Mkhize
Chapter 13 ‘African Contrasts’: Noni Jabavu’s Travelogue as Kaleidoscope – Tina Steiner
Chapter 14 Es’kia Mphahlele, Chemchemi and Pan-African Literary Publics – Christopher E.W. Ouma
Chapter 15 The ‘Crossroads and Forkways’ of Pan-Africanism between 1948 and 1968 – Bhekizizwe Peterson
Chapter 16 ‘She Certainly Couldn’t Be Conventional If She Tried’: Noni Jabavu, the Editor of The New Strand Magazine in London – Makhosazana Xaba
Chapter 17 Anti-Colonial Romance and Tragedy in Peter Abrahams’ A Wreath for Udomo – Andrea Thorpe
18 Mphahlele’s Writing in the Whirlwind – Stéphane Robolin
Chapter 19 From South Africa to Coyaba: Peter Abrahams’ (New) World Geographies – Victoria J. Collis-Buthelezi

Contributors
Index