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When Rain Clouds Gather
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Wikipedia article
'When Rain Clouds Gather' is a 1968 novel by South African-Botswanan author Bessie Head.
Head wrote the novel while in exile in Botswana in 1967.
Plot
Makehaya escapes Apartheid South Africa into Botswana. In the village of Golema Mmidi he meets Gilbert, an Englishman who is trying to modernise farming. They join forces to create a utopia but are opposed by the village chief.
Reception
David P. Bargueo wrote that the book emphasises the twin aspects of hope and despair, and that it depicts love as "a magical force that can overcome insuperable challenges", an idea not present in Head's 1971 work 'A Quest for Power', written after her nervous breakdown.
Helen Oyeyemi wrote of 'When Rain Clouds Gather' and Head that "Her men [] are intensely perceptive, imbued with a 'feminine sensitivity' that raises them above the level of 'grovelling sex organs' that Head complained African men were traditionally reduced to within their communities."
Writing in 'Open Cultural Studies' in 2019, Gerd Bayer says that 'When Rain Clouds Gather' "anticipated some of the politics of early twenty-first-century environmental thinking in the postcolonial sphere. The alliance of various marginalized characters who, one way or another, violate against existing hegemonic structures replaces the ideological and cultural conflict over territory."
In 2022, 'When Rain Clouds Gather' was included on the Big Jubilee Read, a list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors produced to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee.
References
Category:1968 novels
Category:Apartheid novels
Category:Botswana in fiction
Category:Farms in fiction
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