SOUTH AFRICA AUTHOR · FICTION · HISTORY
Abrahams, Peter
Also known as: PETER ABRAHAMS, Abrahams Peter
Peter Abrahams (born June 28, 1947) is an American author of crime fiction for both adults and children. His book Lights Out (1994) was nominated for an Edgar Award for best novel. Reality Check won the best young adult Edgar Award in 2011. Down the Rabbit Hole, first in the Echo Falls series, won the best children's/young adult Agatha Award in 2005. The Fan was adapted into a film starring Robert De Niro and directed by Tony Scott (1996).
We are fast coming to the close of the twentieth century.
— from The Black experience in the 20th century, 2000
Most acclaimed
The Black experience in the 20th century
2000
"The Black Experience in the 20th Century is both a personal memoir and a powerful meditation on what W. E. B. Dubois defined at the beginning of the century as " ... the problem of the colour line; of the relations between the lighter and darker races of man ... " Using Dubois as a point of departure, Abrahams writes passionately, about the inherent "wrongness" of racial hatred and contemplates such timeless questions as: "Why was colour the most crucial issue of our century?" "When will we get over the deep psychic and emotional damage done by the racial experience?" This is one of the major themes of the memoir - that of the quest for an integrated identity - a challenge that faces people of colour in both first and third-world countries." "The Black Experience in the 20th Century is also the personal journey of Peter Abrahams. It is the odyssey of a young South African who worked for a time as a seaman in order to leave his homeland for wartime Britain and post-war France to become a writer; it is the story of his personal relationships with the Black literati of the day and his involvement in the pan-Africanist movement of the 1950s, which allows for his fascinating personal pen-portraits of men like George Padmore, W. E. B. Dubois, Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Richard Wright and Langston Hughes. It is how the journey takes him to the Caribbean island of Jamaica, where he and his wife, Daphne, and their three children find sanctuary from racial divisiveness at "Coyaba." Finally, it is about the author's lifelong companionship with Daphne and how their multiracial union reflects a symbolic "one bloodedness" mirroring Abrahams' own admirable sensibilities."--BOOK JACKET.
Wild conquest
1950
From New York Times bestseller Hannah Howell, a classic love story of a Scottish hero too wild to be tamed and the woman he's destined to set free...Pleasance Dunstan is used to silently bearing the cruelties put upon her by her thoughtless family. But nothing can prepare her for the greatest indignity of all: being sold into servitude to a man as wild as Tearlach O'Duine. His untamed ways are whispered of throughout town, and he has set his sights on Pleasance to be more than his servant. He will have her in his bed. Pleasance could escape this fate with a word, but her fierce pride keeps her silent. Instead, she follows her new master to the rough lands where he has made a home and finds a world beyond any she has ever known--a world of desire. For though he is her captor, only Tearlach can show her how freeing true passion can be...and while her servitude to him will one day end, nothing can stop the binding of their hearts...Praise for the Novels of Hannah Howell: Howell offers readers another captivating tale." --Booklist" Another wonderful story filled with adventure, emotion, and laughter." --Romantic Times
Mine boy
1963
Mine Boy is a novel that talks about the problems the African miners experienced during the apartheid in South Africa. It shows the struggle of Africans to attain equal rights and to be treated as human beings with dignity.