Plaatje was the first black South African to write a novel in English – "Mhudi". He wrote the novel in 1919, but it was only published in 1930 (in 1928 the Zulu writer R. R. R. Dhlomo published an English-language novel, entitled "An African Tragedy", at the missionary Lovedale Press, in Alice; this makes Dhlomo's novel the first published black South African novel in English, even though Plaatje's "Mhudi" had been written first). He also wrote "Native Life in South Africa", which Neil Parsons describes as "one of the most remarkable books on Africa by one of the continent's most remarkable writers", and "Boer War Diary" that was first published 40 years after his death.