When Rain Clouds Gather
Escaping South Africa and his troubled past, Makehaya crosses the border to Botswana, in the hope of leading a peaceful, purposeful life. In the village of Golema Mmidi he meets Gilbert, a charismatic Englishman who is trying to modernise farming methods to benefit the community. The two outsiders join forces, but their task is fraught with hazards: opposition from the corrupt chief, the pressures of tradition, and the unrelenting climate ever threaten to bring tragedy.

Maru
Margaret, an orphan from a despised tribe, has lived her life under the loving protection of a missionary's wife. She has only to open her mouth to cause confusion, for her education and English accent do not fit her looks. When she accepts her first teaching post, in a remote village, Margaret is befriended by Dikeledi, sister of Maru the chief-in-waiting. Despite making influential friends, Margaret faces prejudice even from the children she teaches, and her presence causes Maru and his best friend - also Dikeledi's lover - to become sworn enemies.

"Head brilliantly develops ascending degrees of personal isolation, and is very moving when she describes abating pain." - The Sunday Times

It is never clear to Elizabeth whether the mission school principal's cruel revelation of her origins is at the bottom of her mental breakdown. She has left South Africa with her son and is living in the village of Motabeng, the place of sand, in Botswana where there are no street lights at night.

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 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, opposition from the local chief and the unrelenting climate threaten to divide and devastate the fragile community.

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 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.

In the village of Motabeng, Botswana - the place of sand - Elizabeth and her son have made their new home, far away from their old life in South Africa. But the past cannot be conveniently left behind at the border. Even though she may be free to reinvent herself in this new country, Elizabeth's mixed racial heritage and urban ways mark her as an outsider. A mind-bending novel that takes the reader in and out of sanity, this semi-autobiographical work tracks Elizabeth's struggle to emerge from the oppressive social situation in which she finds herself and from the nightmares and hallucinations that torment her.

First published in 1916 and one of South Africa’s great political books, Native Life in South Africa was first and foremost a response to the Native’s Land Act of 1913, and was written by one of the most gifted and influential writers and journalists of his generation. Sol T. Plaatje provides an account of the origins of this crucially important piece of legislation and a devastating description of its immediate effects.