PUBLISHED IN 1961, Sibusiso Nyembezi's masterpiece is now translated for the first time into English from its original Zulu: Inkinsela yase Mgungundlovu. This timely translation of one of the great South African novels brings to a larger international audience a literary treasure once obscured by apartheid.

It is a hilarious and pleasingly briskly paced comedy of manners, wit, political allusion and deft cultural insight. Set in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands of 1950s rural South Africa, it ingeniously proceeds from a simple but vital premise at the heart of the African philosophy of ubuntu: a traveller stopping at a village must always be looked after and given food, water and entertainment without having to ask.

Thus, when a mysteriously announced but uninvited visitor arrives in the village of Nyanyadu in the middle of a busy sowing season, the villagers have no choice but to down tools and accommodate themselves to his extraordinary behaviour. Describing himself as a philanthropist dedicated to the upliftment of his people, the long-toothed, moustache-twirling city cad arrives bearing apparently impressive credentials.

But who, exactly, is the oddly named CC Ndebenkulu, with his insistently repeated Esquire suffix, no evident clan affiliation, vain idiocy and endless boasting about his influential white friends in the city?

Intrigue and chaos rapidly ensue as the community tries to establish whether Ndebenkulu is a selfless emissary of the ancestors sent to alleviate their economic hardships, or a cunning big-city swindler and cattle thief, come to harvest the possessions of country fools on which their livelihoods depend.

The novel is rich in resonant aphorism, embedded proverbs, comic mise en scène, and what can be described as compulsively readable dialogue.

Here are the traditional themes of great South African fiction - cattle thieving, colonialism, the tension between pastoral country and industrialised city, integrity pitched against dishonesty. The shadow of apartheid lengthens inexorably into the rural life of Nyanyadu in this devastasting fable of the South African peasantry's loss of land and liberties.

Some of the sharper edges of the book's humour and wordplay inevitably elude translation. But Ngidi's elegant rendering of the prose of Nyembezi - who died in 2000 and is regarded as one of the most accomplished authors and scholars of 20th-century South Africa - captures beautifully the description, dialogue and spirit of the novel, and its subtle commentary on Nguni philosophy and Zulu society.

The Rich Man of Pietermaritzburg by Sibusiso Nyembezi
trans. by Sandie Nigidi
Aflame Books, £8.99

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