Welcome to Our Hillbrow: A Novel of Postapartheid South Africa

Phaswane Mpe

Ohio University Press, Feb 24, 2011 - Fiction - 150 pages

Welcome to Our Hillbrow is an exhilarating and disturbingride through the chaotic and hyper-real zone of Hillbrow—microcosm of all that is contradictory, alluring, and painful in the postapartheid South African psyche. Everythingis there: the shattered dreams of youth, sexuality and its unpredictable costs, AIDS, xenophobia, suicide, the omnipotent violence that often cuts short the promise of young people’s lives, and the Africanist understanding of the life continuum that does not end with death but flows on into an ancestral realm. Infused with the rhythms of the inner-city pulsebeat, this courageous novel is compelling in its honesty and its broad vision, which links Hillbrow, rural Tiragalong, and Oxford. It spills out the guts of Hillbrow—living with the same energy and intimate knowledge with which the Drum writers wrote Sophiatown into being.

Contents

• The Map: 1
• Notes from Heaven: 29
• The Journey through Alexandra: 63
• Refilwe: 81
• Refilwe on the Move: 93
• The Returnee: 115

About the author

Phaswane Mpe taught African literature and publishing studies at the University of Witwatersrand. Welcome to Our Hillbrow was his only published novel. He died in 2004.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Welcome to Our Hillbrow: A Novel of Postapartheid South Africa; Modern African Writing
• Author: Phaswane Mpe
• Edition: reprint, revised
• Publisher: Ohio University Press, 2011
• ISBN: 0821443712, 9780821443712
• Length: 150 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Literary Collections / African; Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African Studies