Download or read book The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales written by Bessie Head and published by London [etc.] : Heinemann Educational. This book was released on 1977 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of short stories based on life in a Botswanan village, including the story of a woman who murders the husband who deserted her years before.
Download or read book The Collector of Treasures written by Bessie Head and published by Heinemann. This book was released on 1992 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Botswana village tales about subjects such as the breakdown of family life and the position of women in this society.
Download or read book The Collector of Treasures written by Bessie Head and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Maru written by Bessie Head and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2013-09-16 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Read worldwide for her wisdom, authenticity, and skillful prose, South African–born Bessie Head (1937–1986) offers a moving and magical tale of an orphaned girl, Margaret Cadmore, who goes to teach in a remote village in Botswana where her own people are kept as slaves. Her presence polarizes a community that does not see her people as human, and condemns her to the lonely life of an outcast. In the love story and intrigue that follows, Head brilliantly combines a portrait of loneliness with a rich affirmation of the mystery and spirituality of life. The core of this otherworldly, rhapsodic work is a plot about racial injustice and prejudice with a lesson in how traditional intolerance may render whole sections of a society untouchable.
Download or read book The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales written by Bessie Head and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2013-10-09 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Bessie Head’s short stories have an extraordinary simplicity and breadth of vision,” heralded a review in The Tribune after publication of Head’s first collection of short stories, The Collector of Treasures. Regarded today as one of Africa’s best-known woman writers in English, Head draws on the rich oral tradition of southern Africa and masterfully applies storytelling’s language and imagery. Carefully sequenced, the anthology gives special focus to village people from independence-era Botswana and the status, position, and plight of African women.
Download or read book The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales sound Recording written by b Head and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book When Rain Clouds Gather written by Bessie Head and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2013-09-23 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rural Botswana is the backdrop for When Rain Clouds Gather, the first novel published by one of Africa’s leading woman writers in English, Bessie Head (1937–1986). Inspired by her own traumatic life experiences as an outcast in Apartheid South African society and as a refugee living at the Bamangwato Development Association Farm in Botswana, Head’s tough and telling classic work is set in the poverty-stricken village of Golema Mmidi, a haven to exiles. A South African political refugee and an Englishman join forces to revolutionize 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. Head’s layered, compelling story confronts the complexities of such topics as social and political change, conflict between science and traditional ways, tribalism, the role of traditional African chiefs, religion, race relations, and male–female relations.
Download or read book A Question of Power written by Bessie Head and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2017-03-06 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fast-paced, semi-autobiographical novel, Head exposes the complicated life of Elizabeth, whose reality is intermingled with nightmarish dreams and hallucinations. Like the author, Elizabeth was conceived out-of-wedlock; her mother was white and her father black—a union outlawed in apartheid South Africa. Elizabeth eventually leaves with her young son to live in Botswana, a country less oppressed by colonial domination, where she finds stability for herself and her son by working on an experimental farm. As readers grow to know Elizabeth, they experience the inner chaos that threatens her stability, and her constant struggle to emerge from the torment of her dreams. There she is plagued by two men, Sello and Dan, who represent complex notions of politics, sex, religion, individuality, and the blurred line between good and evil. Elizabeth’s troubling but amazing roller-coaster ride ends in an unfettered discovery.
Download or read book The Poor Christ of Bomba written by Mongo Beti and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-02-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning author Mongo Beti presents The Poor Christ of Bomba, a cutting satirical critique on the role of Catholic missionaries and French colonialism in 1930s Cameroon. A revolutionary novel in its time. In the small village of Bomba, a French missionary priest is instructed to build a parish for its residents. Father Drumont has one important task; to save the village from heresy by preparing its girls for Christian marriage. A servant in Father Drumont's house, a young boy named Denis is reliant on the priest's generosity after the death of his mother. In the eyes of the Catholic church, Denis is the perfect example of the African heathen saved by Christianity – but the reality of what happens behind closed doors in much more sinister. 'One of the foremost African writers of the independence generation.' Guardian
Download or read book Gods and Soldiers written by Rob Spillman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-04-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A one-of-a-kind collection showcasing the energy of new African literature Coming at a time when Africa and African writers are in the midst of a remarkable renaissance, Gods and Soldiers captures the vitality and urgency of African writing today. With stories from northern Arabic-speaking to southern Zulu-speaking writers, this collection conveys thirty different ways of approaching what it means to be African. Whether about life in the new urban melting pots of Cape Town and Luanda, or amid the battlefield chaos of Zimbabwe and Somalia, or set in the imaginary surreal landscapes born out of the oral storytelling tradition, these stories represent a striking cross section of extraordinary writing. Including works by J. M. Coetzee, Chimamanda Adichie, Nuruddin Farah, Binyavanga Wainaina, and Chinua Achebe, and edited by Rob Spillman of Tin House magazine, Gods and Soldiers features many pieces never before published, making it a vibrant and essential glimpse of Africa as it enters the twenty-first century.
Download or read book The Creative Vision of Bessie Head written by Coreen Brown and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an exploration of the way in which Head's writing is her idiosyncratic response to her personal life. Her desire to portray and yet subvert oppression- political, racist, and sexist- that she encountered in South Africa and Botswana, led to a Romanticism born of her need to create an antithesis to what she perceived to be the reality around her. Her eagerness to discover a haven in her adopted rural Botswana led to a Utopia of her own making, a literary resolution imagined, not actual. A mental breakdown led to the creation of her greatest novel, A Question of Power, one which examines the depths of evil, but allows also for the dawning of the heights of goodness. The appendix contains many heretofore unpublished letters that help to explain the personal compulsion that provided for Head's creativity.
Download or read book So Long a Letter written by Mariama Bâ and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2012-05-06 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by award-winning African novelist Mariama Bâ and translated from the original French, So Long a Letter has been recognized as one of Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century. The brief narrative, written as an extended letter, is a sequence of reminiscences —some wistful, some bitter—recounted by recently widowed Senegalese schoolteacher Ramatoulaye Fall. Addressed to a lifelong friend, Aissatou, it is a record of Ramatoulaye’s emotional struggle for survival after her husband betrayed their marriage by taking a second wife. This semi-autobiographical account is a perceptive testimony to the plight of educated and articulate Muslim women. Angered by the traditions that allow polygyny, they inhabit a social milieu dominated by attitudes and values that deny them status equal to men. Ramatoulaye hopes for a world where the best of old customs and new freedom can be combined. Considered a classic of contemporary African women’s literature, So Long a Letter is a must-read for anyone interested in African literature and the passage from colonialism to modernism in a Muslim country. Winner of the prestigious Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.
Download or read book Distant View of a Minaret and Other Stories written by Alifa Rifaat and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2014-01-16 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “More convincingly than any other woman writing in Arabic today, Alifa Rifaat lifts the veil on what it means to be a woman living within a traditional Muslim society.” So states the translator’s foreword to this collection of the Egyptian author’s best short stories. Rifaat (1930–1996) did not go to university, spoke only Arabic, and seldom traveled abroad. This virtual immunity from Western influence lends a special authenticity to her direct yet sincere accounts of death, sexual fulfillment, the lives of women in purdah, and the frustrations of everyday life in a male-dominated Islamic environment. Translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies, the collection admits the reader into a hidden private world, regulated by the call of the mosque, but often full of profound anguish and personal isolation. Badriyya’s despairing anger at her deceitful husband, for example, or the haunting melancholy of “At the Time of the Jasmine,” are treated with a sensitivity to the discipline and order of Islam.
Download or read book Let s Hear It for the Girls written by Erica Bauermeister and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1997-03-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Bravo! They've given adults and young girls a much-needed treasure map of heroines and 'she-roes'...It blazes an important path in the forest of children's literature."—Jim Trelease.
Download or read book Houseboy written by Ferdinand Oyono and published by Heinemann. This book was released on 1990 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in the form of a diary, kept by the Cameroonian houseboy Toundi, this book looks at Toundi's innocence and his awe of the white world of his masters.
Download or read book The Cardinals written by Bessie Head and published by Heinemann. This book was released on 1995 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cardinals--thought to be the first long piece of fiction Head produced and the only one she ever set in South Africa--is an exciting literary event.
Download or read book Chaka written by Thomas Mofolo and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2013-05-21 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chaka is a genuine masterpiece that represents one of the earliest major contributions of black Africa to the corpus of modern world literature. Mofolos fictionalized life-story account of Chaka (Shaka), translated from Sesotho by D. P. Kunene, begins with the future Zulu kings birth followed by the unwarranted taunts and abuse he receives during childhood and adolescence. The author manipulates events leading to Chakas status of great Zulu warrior, conqueror, and king to emphasize classic tragedys psychological themes of ambition and power, cruelty, and ultimate ruin. Mofolos clever nods to the supernatural add symbolic value. Kunenes fine translation renders the dramatic and tragic tensions in Mofolos tale palpable as the richness of the authors own culture is revealed. A substantial introduction by the translator provides valuable context for modern readers.
