Turbott Wolfe
William Plomer
Harvest Books
<span>“It is an inexplicable 
lapse on the part of literary scholars and critics,” writes Nadine 
Gordimer in her Introduction, “that Turbott Wolfe is not recognised as a
 pyrotechnic presence in the canon of renegade colonialist literature 
along with Conrad.” Indeed, William Plomer’s astonishing first novel, 
which first appeared in 1926, ignited a firestorm of controversy in his 
native South Africa. At the novel’s center is Turbott Wolfe, a British 
trader who opens a general store in Lembuland. He befriends many of his 
black customers but has less luck ingratiating himself with the bigoted 
whites who have lived in the area for generations. Eventually, Wolfe and
 his comrades embrace miscegenation as the key to Africa’s future—the 
Young Africa, where the races have blurred. Provocative and deeply 
questioning, <i>Turbott Wolfe</i> remains a powerful chronicle of the intimate human consequences of racism.</span>