Ezekiel Mphahlele - later to go by the name of Es'kia Mphahlele - was 13 years of age when he and his younger siblings moved from his ancestral village outside then Pietersburg to a slum called Marabastad, in Pretoria.

What immediately struck him about his new environment was the wretchedness, the poverty. It was this poverty that inspired his grandmother to start brewing traditional beer which she sold illegally to raise funds to put food on the table, and send the kids to school...