Mr. Es’kia Mphahlele (1919 – 2008), was a South African novelist and essayist whose work focused on responses to alienation and themes of African Humanism. Because of his outspoken opposition to apartheid and the Bantu Education Act, Mphahlele was twice banned as a teacher and exiled from his country. He authored some fourteen volumes of short stories, essays, criticism and poetry, including Down Second Avenue, Modern African Stories, Voices in the Whirlwind and Other Essays, and The African Image.