Born in 1936 in Durban (South Africa).

Lewis Nkosi (born 1936) is a South African writer and essayist. Nkosi worked for many years in Durban for the magazine Ilanga lase Natal and in Johannesburg for Drum. Nkosi faced severe regulations on his writing due to the publishing regulations found in the Suppression of Communism Act and the Publications and Entertainment Act passed in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1961, he received a scholarship to study at Harvard, and he began his life in exile. Since then, he has been an editor for The New African in London, and the NET in the United States. He became a Professor of Literature and has held positions at the University of Wyoming and the University of California-Irvine, as well as at Universities in Zambia and Warsaw, Poland. Nkosi's work explores themes of politics, relationships, and sexuality. Interestingly, Nkosi joined forces with African powerhouse authors Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka in an interview in the third chapter of Bernth Lindfors' Conversations With Chinua Achebe.

Bibliography

Collections of essays
Home and Exile, Longmans, 1965
Home and exile and other selections, Longman, 1983, ISBN 0-58-264406-2
The Transplanted Heart: Essays on South Africa (1975)
Tasks and Masks: Themes and Styles of African Literature, Longman, 1981, ISBN 0-58-264145-4
Mandela et moi,éditions Actes Sud, juin 2010

Plays
The Rhythm of Violence (1964)
The Black Psychiatrist (2001)

Novels
Mating Birds, Constable, 1986, ISBN 0-09-467240-7 (Winner of the Macmillan Pen prize)
Underground People, Kwela, 2002, ISBN 0-79-570150-0, originally published in Dutch in 1994
Mandela's Ego (2006)

Films
He shared the writing credits on Come Back, Africa, a film filmed mainly in Sophiatown.

Sources
Conversations With Chinua Achebe Edited by Bernth Lindfors. University Press of Mississippi (October, 1997)
Southern African Writing: Voyages and Explorations edited by Geoffrey V. Davis. Rodopi (January, 1994)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Nkosi