The Marabi Dance is the striking coming-of-age novel following aspiring singer, Martha, as she falls in love with the underground Marabi culture in 1930s South Africa.

Growing up in the slums of Johannesburg, Martha is fascinated by the lively sounds of Marabi music. While her friends understand her passion for singing and dancing, her parents can only see a dangerous underworld full of gangs and violence. To make matters worse, her crush on a handsome and talented Marabi musician is developing into something more – despite her father's plans to marry her off to her cousin. Stuck between the values of the past and a rapidly changing world, Martha struggles to see a future that won't betray either herself or her parents.

Originally banned from publication, Dikobe's novel beautifully captures the social climate of South Africa in the years before apartheid.

'Novels as emotionally true as this about South Africa are rare.' Ros de Lanerolle

Novels as emotionally true as this about South Africa are rare. -- Ros de Lanerolle

Modikwe Dikobe was the pseudonym of Marks Rammitloa, a novelist, poet, and activist born in 1914 in the former Province of the Transvaal, South Africa.

His social activism began in the early 1940s when he joined protests against segregation and advocated for the rights of tenants. He eventually become secretary to the Alexandra Squatters’ Resistance, a movement necessitated by high rents in Johannesburg.

Dikobe went on to write for the newspaper Inkululeko and was briefly arrested for his political activities, with a ban placed on his writings. In 1963, he took a job as a nightwatchman and began writing The Marabi Dance. He later released a collection of poetry, The Dispossessed, in 1983.

Dikobe died in 2005.