The Lovers (African Writers Series)

45.00

In stock (can be backordered)

The Lovers collects 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.

Additional information

Weight 0.25 kg

Bessie Head

Bessie Emery Head (6 July 1937 – 17 April 1986), though born in South Africa, is usually considered Botswana's most influential writer.

Bessie Emery Head was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. It was claimed that her mother was mentally ill so that she could be sent to a quiet location to give birth to Bessie without the neighbours knowing. However, the exact circumstances are disputed, and some of Bessie Head's comments, though often quoted as straight autobiography, are in fact from fictionalized settings.

In the 1950s and '60s she was a teacher, then a journalist for the South African magazine Drum. In 1964 she moved to Botswana (then still the Bechuanaland Protectorate) as a refugee, having been peripherally involved with Pan-African politics. It would take 15 years for Head to obtain Botswana citizenship. Head settled in Serowe, the largest of Botswana's "villages" (i.e. traditional settlements as opposed to settler towns). Serowe was famous both for its historical importance, as capital of the Bamangwato people, and for the experimental Swaneng school of Patrick van Rensburg. The deposed chief of the Bamangwato, Seretse Khama, was soon to become the first President of independent Botswana.

Her early death in 1986 (aged 48) from Hepatitis came just at the point where she was starting to achieve recognition as a writer and was no longer so desperately poor.

Be the first to review “The Lovers (African Writers Series)”

Reviews

There are no reviews yet.

Main Menu

The Lovers (African Writers Series)

45.00

Add to cart