TIYO SOGA, a literary history

393pp., illus., paperback, Pretoria, 2018

Winner of the Hiddingh-Currie Award 2019.

Tiyo "Zisani" Soga was born in 1831 in free Xhosa lands, the son of a counsellor to the Xhosa chief Ngqika, Soga completed his degree at the Andersonian Institute in Glasgow in 1854 and was ordained as a minister in the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1856. He returned to the Eastern Cape with his Scots bride, Janet nee Burnside, and worked as a minister, writer, and translator. He translated the Bible and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress into isiXhosa. He died of tuberculosis in 1871.

Literary historian Dr Joanne Davis lives in London. She recently held a research associate at the Centre of World Christianity at SOAS.