Welcome to Our Hillbrow was an important work as it was the first novel to deal with the changes of inner-city life in South Africa in the ten years since Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk engineered apartheid's demise.
The book depicts the native black South Africans facing the challenges of poverty, unemployment, and HIV/AIDS.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering the prevalence of the disease in South Africa, HIV and AIDS were common themes in Mpe's work.
Before his death he embarked on doctorate studies on sexuality in post-apartheid South African literature with a particular focus on these two issues.
Mpe died suddenly at the age of 34, at a time when he was about to begin training as a traditional healer.