Mhudi: An Epic of South African Native Life a Hundred Years Ago is a South African novel by Sol Plaatje, first published in 1930. The novel has been republished many times, including in the influential Heinemann African Writers Series.

The novel is a political historical novel which explores the development of the Traansval kingdom, led by Matabeleland. The novel was originally finished in 1920, but Plaatje was unable to get the novel published. The novel re-envisions the standard Eurocentric narrative of history, which supported Apartheid and its racist infrastructure.

Plaatje described the novel as a romance, comparing it to the Zulu novels of H. Rider Haggard.

Further reading

  • Johnson, David (1 December 1994). . Journal of Literary Studies. 10 (3–4): 345–358. doi:. ISSN .
  • Chrisman, Laura (2000). "Complex Relations: African Nationalism, Imperialism, and Form in Mhudi". Rereading the Imperial Romance: British Imperialism and South African Resistance in Haggard, Schreiner, and Plaatje. Oxford Scholarship Online. pp. 187–208. doi:. ISBN 9780198122999.

See also

  • Guanya Pau: A Story of an African Princess, an 1891 Liberian English-language novel

External links

  • at HathiTrust Digital Library