Bessie Head

During her exile in Botswana, Bessie Head exchanged frequent letters with the South African poet and publisher Patrick Cullinan and his wife, Wendy. This correspondence became a record of Head's struggle to survive her isolation at a time when she was discovering her power as a writer. The Cullinans were among her few constant sources of moral, and sometimes material, support, and in the warm exchange of what passed between them, a picture emerges of the period during which so many South African writers and activists faced the challenge of exile. Cullinan's commentary on Head's writing is trenchant and engaging, and he uses his own considerable skills as a writer to construct a narrative that is both absorbing and illuminating. Imaginative Trespasser is a poignant account of a friendship that grew in and through letters, survived the pressures of exile, and yet was deeply damaged by the demons that Bessie Head carried within her during the difficult years of her life in Botswana.

The Loverscollects Head’s short fiction of the 1960s and 70s, written mainly in Serowe, Botswana, and depicting the lives and loves of African village people pre- and post-independence. An earlier selection called Tales of Tenderness and Power was published in the Heinemann African Writers Series in 1990, but this expanded and updated volume adds many previously unavailable stories collected here for the first time. Anthology favourites like her breakthrough 'The Woman from America' and 'The Prisoner who Wore Glasses' are included, leading up to the first complete text of her much translated title story.

In two powerful novels of belonging, one of Africa's most important writers explores village life and the traditions of Botswana.

In the heart of rural Botswana, the poverty stricken village of Golema Mmidi is a haven to exiles from far and wide. A South African political refugee and an Englishman join forces to revolutionise the villagers' traditional farming methods, but their task is fraught with hazards as the pressures of tradition.

Maru is the moving tale of an orphaned Masarwa girl who goes to teach in a remote village in Botswana where her own people are kept as slaves. Her presence polarises a community which does not see Masarwa people as human, and condemns her to the lonely life of an outcast. Bessie Head was one of the best-known writers in Africa, whose works were mostly inspired by her own traumatic life experiences as an outcast in Apartheid South African society. This edition of Maru includes an introduction by Stephen Gray, former Head of English at the University of Johannesburg.

In Serowe:Village of the Rain Wind, Bessie Head blends her skills as a novelist with the actual words of nearly one hundred inhabitants of a Botswanan village called Serowe to present a clear picture of the village community and its history. Serowe is one of the best-known villages in Africa, the capital of the people ruled by the Khamas, of whom Tshekedi and Seretse are the most famous. This collection of writings also tells of a remarkable transition between the setting up and the dismantling of white colonialism in Botswana.