What do you think?
Rate this book
In Corner B
This collection of stories deals with human relationships and attitudes under the oppressive regime in South Africa but shows that black life, through recourse to humour and a common humanity, constantly renews its own initiatives.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
8 people are currently reading
147 people want to read
About the author
Ezekiel Mphahlele
25 books16 followersBorn Ezekiel Mphahlele, Es'kia Mphahlele (born Dec. 17, 1919, Marabastad, S.Af.—died Oct. 27, 2008, Lebowakgomo), novelist, essayist, short-story writer, and teacher whose autobiography, Down Second Avenue (1959), is a South African classic. It combines the story of a young man’s growth into adulthood with penetrating social criticism of the conditions forced upon black South Africans by apartheid.
Mphahlele grew up in Pretoria and attended St. Peter’s Secondary School in Rosettenville and Adams Teachers Training College in Natal. His early career as a teacher of English and Afrikaans was terminated by the government because of his strong opposition to the highly restrictive Bantu Education Act. In Pretoria he was fiction editor of Drum magazine (1955–57) and a graduate student at the University of South Africa (M.A., 1956). He went into voluntary exile in 1957, first arriving in Nigeria. Thereafter Mphahlele held a number of academic and cultural posts in Africa, Europe, and the United States.
He was director of the African program at the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Paris. He was coeditor with Ulli Beier and Wole Soyinka of the influential literary periodical Black Orpheus (1960–64), published in Ibadan, Nigeria; founder and director of Chemchemi, a cultural centre in Nairobi for artists and writers (1963–65); and editor of the periodical Africa Today (1967). He received a doctorate from the University of Denver in 1968. In 1977 he returned to South Africa and became head of the department of African Literature at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (1983–87).
Mphahlele’s critical writings include two books of essays, The African Image (1962) and Voices in the Whirlwind (1972), that address Negritude, the African personality, nationalism, the black African writer, and the literary image of Africa. He helped to found the first independent black publishing house in South Africa, coedited the anthology Modern African Stories (1964), and contributed to African Writing Today (1967). His short stories—collected in part in In Corner B (1967), The Unbroken Song (1981), and Renewal Time (1988)—were almost all set in Nigeria. His later works include the novels The Wanderers (1971) and Chirundu (1979) and a sequel to his autobiography, Afrika My Music (1984). Es’kia (2002) and Es’kia Continued (2005) are collections of essays and other writings.
Mphahlele grew up in Pretoria and attended St. Peter’s Secondary School in Rosettenville and Adams Teachers Training College in Natal. His early career as a teacher of English and Afrikaans was terminated by the government because of his strong opposition to the highly restrictive Bantu Education Act. In Pretoria he was fiction editor of Drum magazine (1955–57) and a graduate student at the University of South Africa (M.A., 1956). He went into voluntary exile in 1957, first arriving in Nigeria. Thereafter Mphahlele held a number of academic and cultural posts in Africa, Europe, and the United States.
He was director of the African program at the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Paris. He was coeditor with Ulli Beier and Wole Soyinka of the influential literary periodical Black Orpheus (1960–64), published in Ibadan, Nigeria; founder and director of Chemchemi, a cultural centre in Nairobi for artists and writers (1963–65); and editor of the periodical Africa Today (1967). He received a doctorate from the University of Denver in 1968. In 1977 he returned to South Africa and became head of the department of African Literature at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (1983–87).
Mphahlele’s critical writings include two books of essays, The African Image (1962) and Voices in the Whirlwind (1972), that address Negritude, the African personality, nationalism, the black African writer, and the literary image of Africa. He helped to found the first independent black publishing house in South Africa, coedited the anthology Modern African Stories (1964), and contributed to African Writing Today (1967). His short stories—collected in part in In Corner B (1967), The Unbroken Song (1981), and Renewal Time (1988)—were almost all set in Nigeria. His later works include the novels The Wanderers (1971) and Chirundu (1979) and a sequel to his autobiography, Afrika My Music (1984). Es’kia (2002) and Es’kia Continued (2005) are collections of essays and other writings.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 14, 2012
a classic, with nice introductory essay and bibliography. Hard hitting short stories from a south african who is called the "dean of african letters", he went in exile for many years, living from zambia to usa, france, kenya, all over, but always wrote about apratheid more than anything else. Was one of the leaders of literature in south africa after nadine gordimer read his story, "the suitcase". That particular tale encapsulates black experience before 1994. a poor guy, desperately hunting a job, is returning home on the bus with no job, and two ladies leave a suitcase on the bus. His lucky day, he figures, and lies and fights for that damn case. While walking home he gets busted by a cop roadblock, and in interrogation insists the case is his. Cops open it and find a dead baby. Guy goes to prison.
Most of the stories highlight the struggles for equality, downtroddeness, paranoia, poverety, internecine fighting, the attempt to reconcile tradition with modern city life. Good stuff, but not too cheery.
Most of the stories highlight the struggles for equality, downtroddeness, paranoia, poverety, internecine fighting, the attempt to reconcile tradition with modern city life. Good stuff, but not too cheery.
October 16, 2021
Moving, beautiful stories of humanity, the images that dance across the pages stir the heart.
I have not come across such a writer of short stories since Roald Dahl.
I have not come across such a writer of short stories since Roald Dahl.
May 4, 2022
“In Corner B” hosts a collection of powerful short stories taking place in Apartheid South Africa and 1960s Nigeria. The writing style conveys incredible emotion alongside well crafted details. For me, “Mrs Plum” and “Crossing Over” stand out as favourites.
May 31, 2018
In Corner B - Es’kia Mphahlele
Penguin Classics cobbles together the essential short stories and essays of Es'kia Mphahlele, a revered icon in African emergent literature. This edition comes with a critical introduction by a literary scholar who happened to be the author's student.
While the stories mostly take place in Africa in the 1960s, the characters portray emotions, thoughts and lives that are accessible even to a modern day reader. Perhaps that is the power of good writing by a generational writer. Words, when properly deployed by a thoughtful writer, can generate unique patchworks of realities of such cultural and sociopolitical diversity yet remain within the comprehension of a layperson. This feat, I suspect, is achieved with the selection of words and idioms, the arrangements and weights of which are tied to strands of traits, habits and foibles common to all human beings across all times and all strata. Distance, time and space as narrative contexts no longer become barriers to understanding a story as the reader immediately recognizes familiar elements as easily as gazing one's reflection in the mirror. With exceptional writing, the characters may live out their stories in the other side of the world at a time several decades removed from the present but remain relatable to the reader of whatever circumstance, leanings, age and stripe.
I came away from the experience of reading the collection of stories with a firmer grasp of the notion that writing is partially a performance art. Realities, fictional or otherwise, are gestured into existence much in the same way a jar is produced into existence with the synchronised movements of hands and clay. A 30-minute Youtube video on Es'kia Mphahlele confirmed my suspicion that the author considered writing as performance much in the same way as one would when it comes to musical instruments.
As a final note, Es'kia Mphahlele's skilled use of idioms in delivering a complicated thought made it obvious to me that words are not the end to writing as they are only tools and media to ferret ideas. That is to say that clay and kneading techniques are acts of pottery and not the actual pot itself; just as words and idioms are part of writing but not the written work itself. The final product should not be mistaken for the parts which it took to produce it. I say this since I have noticed that most Filipino writers I have come across over the years have been heavily fixated on developing diction, grammar and style under the erroneous belief that mastery in these aspects will produce literature. I find that is never the case. A writer has to come upon insight through lived experiences first before the words necessary to express them become available. While competent writing is ideal, a person possessed and haunted by a powerful story would do well to imbibe it in full than waste time flipping the dictionary and thesaurus searching words to communicate the experience.
Penguin Classics cobbles together the essential short stories and essays of Es'kia Mphahlele, a revered icon in African emergent literature. This edition comes with a critical introduction by a literary scholar who happened to be the author's student.
While the stories mostly take place in Africa in the 1960s, the characters portray emotions, thoughts and lives that are accessible even to a modern day reader. Perhaps that is the power of good writing by a generational writer. Words, when properly deployed by a thoughtful writer, can generate unique patchworks of realities of such cultural and sociopolitical diversity yet remain within the comprehension of a layperson. This feat, I suspect, is achieved with the selection of words and idioms, the arrangements and weights of which are tied to strands of traits, habits and foibles common to all human beings across all times and all strata. Distance, time and space as narrative contexts no longer become barriers to understanding a story as the reader immediately recognizes familiar elements as easily as gazing one's reflection in the mirror. With exceptional writing, the characters may live out their stories in the other side of the world at a time several decades removed from the present but remain relatable to the reader of whatever circumstance, leanings, age and stripe.
I came away from the experience of reading the collection of stories with a firmer grasp of the notion that writing is partially a performance art. Realities, fictional or otherwise, are gestured into existence much in the same way a jar is produced into existence with the synchronised movements of hands and clay. A 30-minute Youtube video on Es'kia Mphahlele confirmed my suspicion that the author considered writing as performance much in the same way as one would when it comes to musical instruments.
As a final note, Es'kia Mphahlele's skilled use of idioms in delivering a complicated thought made it obvious to me that words are not the end to writing as they are only tools and media to ferret ideas. That is to say that clay and kneading techniques are acts of pottery and not the actual pot itself; just as words and idioms are part of writing but not the written work itself. The final product should not be mistaken for the parts which it took to produce it. I say this since I have noticed that most Filipino writers I have come across over the years have been heavily fixated on developing diction, grammar and style under the erroneous belief that mastery in these aspects will produce literature. I find that is never the case. A writer has to come upon insight through lived experiences first before the words necessary to express them become available. While competent writing is ideal, a person possessed and haunted by a powerful story would do well to imbibe it in full than waste time flipping the dictionary and thesaurus searching words to communicate the experience.
August 10, 2021
Just couldn't get over how beautifully written this book was!
A shame really, that I got to an author of such relevance as Mphahlele had to African literature only recently, and that only on a whim.
"In Corner B" is a collection of short stories set mostly in South Africa during the height of apartheid. The stories are interesting, deep and thought-provoking with themes ranging from detachment to love, defeatism to optimism about life, love and being black.
I loved the richly African setting that acts a backdrop to these stories, and the language that ties it all in together.
Some of my favourite quotes:
"As Christ never explained what a black man should do in order to earn a decent living in this country, we can only follow our instincts."
"A black man never starves if he lives among his people, unless there is famine."
"Whoever thought up the word "Coloured" must have been one of those people who are so obsessed with the subject of "colour" that when they belch, the reek of it hits you a mile away."
"Karel's whole physical being seemed to be made of laughter. When he was going to laugh, he shook and quivered as if to "warm up" for a take-off and then the laugh was released like a volley deep down his large tummy, virtually bullying the listener to join in the 'feast'."
"The affection he had for his wife found a perverse expression id drink and he took to his music with a deeper and savage passion which, as he puts it, was a kind of hot fermentation to help burst the boil of grief inside him."
A shame really, that I got to an author of such relevance as Mphahlele had to African literature only recently, and that only on a whim.
"In Corner B" is a collection of short stories set mostly in South Africa during the height of apartheid. The stories are interesting, deep and thought-provoking with themes ranging from detachment to love, defeatism to optimism about life, love and being black.
I loved the richly African setting that acts a backdrop to these stories, and the language that ties it all in together.
Some of my favourite quotes:
"As Christ never explained what a black man should do in order to earn a decent living in this country, we can only follow our instincts."
"A black man never starves if he lives among his people, unless there is famine."
"Whoever thought up the word "Coloured" must have been one of those people who are so obsessed with the subject of "colour" that when they belch, the reek of it hits you a mile away."
"Karel's whole physical being seemed to be made of laughter. When he was going to laugh, he shook and quivered as if to "warm up" for a take-off and then the laugh was released like a volley deep down his large tummy, virtually bullying the listener to join in the 'feast'."
"The affection he had for his wife found a perverse expression id drink and he took to his music with a deeper and savage passion which, as he puts it, was a kind of hot fermentation to help burst the boil of grief inside him."
December 26, 2021
A collection of short stories revealing life under apartheid. The stories are uneven but some are masterful. The initial stories felt inspired by O Henry. Later ones are more slices of life. White figures are rarely represented and then only in caricature in theses slices of African life but you feel the weight of limited opportunity and constant indignities. Mphahlele's stories are not without humor including one about investing in a rural girl's beauty padgent bid or in Ms. Plum a story that reveals the ineffectiveness of white liberals under apartheid while drawing uncomfortable comparisons between the treatment of pets and servants. I enjoyed the collection because of my interest in South Africa but wouldn't recommend more than a few stories to a more general reader.
July 28, 2023
This was my first time reading a book by a South African writer and I’m glad I started with Es’kia Mphahlele. He paints a very vivid picture of the lives and struggles, the people both black and white and the townships and suburbs they lived in and the gradual closing in of their horizons under the crushing weight of apartheid, something Mphahlele himself experienced. The stories are gut wrenching, often tragic, interspersed with humorous moments and the incisive remarks of a keen observer. I thought the Nigerian tales were an interesting contrast to the South African stories and clearly drove home how different the African experience is across the continent, something I feel more of the world should understand.
Read
November 15, 2020Short fiction by the grandfather of Black African English literature. Excellent. The language is discrete in its bluntness, and the stories that fabulous uncertain quality which is the hallmark of the best works in this genre. Reminded me of Naipaul in its use of a traditionally Western format to comment on and critique a non-occidental culture. The one about the dogs is nuts man.
Want to read
November 17, 2022Read so far:
My experience as a writer
The unfinished story
Man must live
*The suitcase
Down the quiet street
*The master of Doornvlei
*The living and the dead
*He and the cat
In corner B
A point of identity
*Grieg on a stolen piano
*Mrs. Plum
Nigerian talking points
A ballad of Oyo
The barber of Bariga
Women and their men
Crossing over
***
*The coffee-cart girl
My experience as a writer
The unfinished story
Man must live
*The suitcase
Down the quiet street
*The master of Doornvlei
*The living and the dead
*He and the cat
In corner B
A point of identity
*Grieg on a stolen piano
*Mrs. Plum
Nigerian talking points
A ballad of Oyo
The barber of Bariga
Women and their men
Crossing over
***
*The coffee-cart girl
December 26, 2022
A great narrative about township life during the apartheid data..
October 21, 2013
I highly recommend finding and reading these stories. Ezekiel Mphahlele was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969. These vivid earthy short stories about rural and urban life of Blacks in South Africa during apartheid have stayed in my mind long after I finished them. I don't usually read short stories but the "Nobel Prize" caught my eye. The stories are poignant portraits of daily life in South Africa written by a South African. The whites are peripheral.
March 24, 2011
Powerful stories, most of them set in South Africa, and several essays. "Mrs. Plum"--about a liberal white South African, her servants, and her dogs--was the highlight of the collection for me.
March 28, 2012
These short stories were entertaining. To think apart"hate" was just the "other day"...anyway, the dialect slowed me down a bit. All in all, it was an enjoyable book.
October 13, 2012
From the introduction essay to the very last story.. Wonderful!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews