Alex La Guma

 Alex La Guma (1925-1985)

African Writing in Englsih

South African writer, who used his writing to give a voice to the black South Africans oppressed under apartheid, the official policy of racial segregation followed in South Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. La Guma's work helped provide an artistic vision of cultural change that accompanied the efforts of the more celebrated antiapartheid political figures of South Africa, such as Nelson Mandela and Stephen Biko.La Guma is best known, however, for his novels, especially A Walk in the Night (1962), a short novel that traces the movement of the protagonist, Michael Adonis, toward criminality as he copes with poverty, police harassment, and racism in the workplace.La Guma's novel And a Threefold Cord (1964), set in Cape Town during an unrelenting rainstorm, focuses on poor black families who live under bleak economic conditions.The novel The Stone Country (1967) depicts life in a South African prison, the brutality of which serves as a metaphor for the experience of black South Africans living under apartheid. La Guma's other works include the edited volume Apartheid: A Collection of Writings on South African Racism by South Africans (1971), the autobiographical novel In the Fog of the Seasons' End (1972), the travel book A Soviet Journey (1978), and the novel Time of the Butcherbird (1979).