The path of thunder

Peter Henry Abrahams Deras was born in Vrededorp, South Africa on March 3, 1919. Before entering school at the age of 11, he sold firewood and worked for a local tinsmith. He completed a three-year course at a colored school in Vrededorp in one year and won a scholarship to the Diocesan Training College in Grace Dieu. He later studied at St. show more Peter's, an elite school for blacks in Rosettenville. While working as an editor at a socialist magazine in Durban in 1939, he found work as a stoker aboard a freighter and made his way to London. Once there, he was hired as a dispatch clerk at a socialist bookstore and did editing for The Daily Worker, the newspaper of the British Communist Party. He eventually moved to Jamaica and broadcast political commentaries on Radio Jamaica for four decades. His novels and journalism explored the injustices of apartheid and the complexities of racial politics. His novels included Song of the City, Mine Boy, The Path of Thunder, A Night of Their Own, The View from Coyaba, A Wreath for Udomo, and This Island, Now. His other works included Dark Testament, Return to Goli, Jamaica: An Island Mosaic, Tell Freedom: Memories of Africa, and The Black Experience in the 20th Century: An Autobiography and Meditation. He died on January 18, 2017 at the age of 97. (Bowker Author Biography) show less