Tsotsi is the only novel ever written by the prolific playwright Athol Fugard. At its heart, the book is an internal psychological dialogue of the "Tsotsi" character on a journey of awakening that leads to the rediscovery of his memory and his humanity. Written in the early 1960's around the time of his first stage success, The Blood Knot, and set in the 1950's, it remained unpublished until 1980, by which time plays of Fugard's like Boesman and Lena, Sizwe Banzi is Dead and Master Harold and the Boys had become big international stage successes.

Fugard was born in Middelburg, South Africa in 1932, the son of white English and Afrikaans parents. He was brought up with English as his mother tongue but describes himself as an Afrikaner writing in English.

Educated at a Catholic school, technical college and the University of Cape Town, where his deep-rooted interest in the writings of Albert Camus began, he left university a few months shy of his final examinations in 1953, and worked as a seaman and newspaper reporter. After some acting experience he started writing plays about characters living in South Africa in the apartheid dominated culture of the day.

In 1956 he married novelist and poet Sheila Meiring and they moved to Johannesburg where Fugard worked in a "Native Commissioners' Court" as a clerk: an experience that made him acutely aware of the injustices of apartheid. Through his plays he brought to the rest of the world an understanding of the difficulties and beauty of his homeland, but his attacks on apartheid brought him into extreme conflict with the South African government. After The Blood Knot (written in 1961 and considered the first great play of its time) was produced in England, the government withdrew his passport for four years. His support in 1962 of an international boycott against the South African practice of segregating theater audiences led to further restrictions. The restrictions were relaxed somewhat in 1971, when he was allowed to travel to England to direct his play Boesman and Lena.

He has written 20 plays, the most recent of which is Exits and Entrances written and produced in Los Angeles in 2004. His work, including his seminal collaborations with black actors like John Kani and Winston Ntshona, emphasizes the absurdity of life as a condition resulting from human power structures (most frequently apartheid in South Africa) and not as the condition of life itself. 'My real territory as a dramatist is the world of secrets with their powerful effect on human behaviour and the trauma of their revelation,' says Fugard. 'They are the dynamos that generate all the significant action in my plays.'