Mphuthumi ‘Mpush’ Ntabeni is a South African historical novelist whose work explores the moral, political, and human complexities of the Eastern Cape frontier. His debut novel, The Broken River Tent (BlackBird Books, 2018), a historical reimagining of the life of the Xhosa leader Maqoma, who fought in five of the nine Frontier Wars between amaXhosa and the British Empire, won the University of Johannesburg Debut Prize in 2019. His second novel, The Wanderers (Kwela Books, 2021), continued his exploration of displacement, memory, and the long shadows of history.
He lives in Cape Town, while spending extended periods conducting research in his home province of the Eastern Cape, where much of the century-long Frontier Wars unfolded. His forthcoming novel, Multitudes (Kwela Books, September 2026), is a reflective literary work that explores the moral and emotional terrain of fatherhood, memory, and inheritance, tracing how the intimate responsibilities of family life intersect with history, identity, and the quiet search for meaning in a fractured modern world.