Because Mphahlele has established himself as a major African literary critic, cultural commentator, and short story writer, we awaited his first published novel with hopeful expectations. But we were somewhat disappointed [with The Wanderers].

Although Timi Tabane, the black exile and first person narrator, tells us, near the beginning of the novel, how his life and that of Steven Cartwright, the white South African exile, are "twined around each other", and although Mphahlele uses Steve as a first person narrator for some fifty pages, the story is primarily concerned with Timi's life as a reporter in South Africa and with his years in exile in Nigeria and Kenya. The shifts in narrator, using Timi, Steve, and an omniscient third person, seem contrived to show different points of view that might be expected to lead to a more complete picture of the exile's life. But they fail to do so.

The reader who has some knowledge of Mphal lele's life cannot avoid seeing the novel as largely autobiographical…. [We] feel certain, early in the work, that Mphahlele must have something to tell us of the life of the exile. And he does, but it is somehow not enough. We are kept waiting for something to happen in the story. We have the vivid sketches of life for the black man in the South African ghetto of Jericho township (which remind us much of Mphahlele's autobiography, Down Second Avenue); we have the episode concerning the reporter's mission to photograph the Goshen potato farm and investigate the fate of one of the prisoners sentenced to work there "for not being in possession of identity passbooks"; we read of and understand the situation which causes the central characters to leave South Africa; we feel with them the insecurity and rootlessness of the exile; we have portraits of other characters who live under conditions of apartheid in Johannesburg and social unacceptance or ostracism in Nigeria and Kenya. But the action and plot of the story still leave us wanting. (p. 41)

In Jamesian terms, Timi is not "interesting". But the life around him is. The book is certainly worth reading for the reportorial view it gives of life as an exile. It is also worth reading for Timi's philosophical discussions and Mphahlele's short digressions somewhat thinly disguised as Timi's musings on his condition. They remind us of Mphahlele's The African Image; here again we see the critical humanist, but in the character of Timi Tabane. Also, many of the episodes could stand by themselves as good short stories. (pp. 41-2)

The Wanderers is a curious mixture of a picture of life continually interesting, if appalling, to the westerner combined with an obvious failure to maintain a narrative to a point where we would unqualifyingly call it a novel. (p. 42)