Underground People — Lewis Nkosi

Cornelius Molapo, an urban dandy, poet, dancer, and political orator, becomes the leader of the South African National Liberation Movement in this work of fiction that exposes the underside of a fictional revolutionary movement in the last years of apartheid. Ordered to lead a peasant uprising in remote Tabanyane, Cornelius becomes a pawn in a much bigger political game. This reluctant leader disappears, but returns as a dedicated revolutionary who would choose death over defeat. In energetic and crafted language, this story brings elements of a political thriller into a sophisticated human drama.