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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
This book is about life in a rural Botswana village. It starts with Makhaya fleeing South Africa for neighbouring Botswana and seeking refugee status in a rural farming village. In South Africa he has been the victim of apartheid and police brutality. In the village he meets various characters including Gilbert an Englishman who is trying to change farming methods but is having to battle the corrupt chief Matenge. The books touches on the chief system, the role of women , the various farming methods employed , the tragedy of a drought and life in Botswana. It is certainly an interesting picture of African life and a good read.
3,5 stars. although i still struggled to get into this - the way he drones on about crops and agriculture is a bit too much for me - i enjoyed it a lot more than the first time i read it.
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
If I were to give a more definite rating to the book it would be a 3.5 which means it is a good book. An exile fleeing Apartheid South Africa seeks refuge in a small rural town in Botswana and finds himself in the middle of a tussle for power and plans for development.
Set in the 1960s, during Botswana's independence, Bessie Head who was a refugee in Botswana herself writes splendidly of rural Botswana. I liked the way Bessie Head writes romance, her ability to incorporate the landscape, climate and vegetation of Botswana and the customs and general way of life of the Batswana in her prose, even though it felt like it got in the way of the story at times.
Set in the 1960s, during Botswana's independence, Bessie Head who was a refugee in Botswana herself writes splendidly of rural Botswana. I liked the way Bessie Head writes romance, her ability to incorporate the landscape, climate and vegetation of Botswana and the customs and general way of life of the Batswana in her prose, even though it felt like it got in the way of the story at times.
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Child death
Moderate: Suicide
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book is breathtaking and fantastically written. I wasn’t sure I could get into a book about agriculture, but the story is ultimately about the people and about humanity. For all the suffering, it gave me a real sense of warmth.
When you decide to do a Read Around the World challenge, you learn quickly how tricky it is deciding what books fall under what country. In this case, Bessie Head was born in South Africa to a white mother and black father, at a time when this was illegal. She moved to Botswana before her 30s and never returned to South Africa. So while both the novel and the author straddle both countries, I’m considering this as a novel from Botswana.
Though this is quite a small novel, sitting at around 200 pages, it is packed with complexity while still somehow feeling simple. On the surface, the novel is about a South African man named Makhaya, who crosses the border into Botswana as a refugee with a shady past. He finds himself in a small, rural village called Golema Mmidi, and it is here we meet the other central characters, as they fight to improve their lives while still battling the unforgiving Botswana climate, some morally vacuous leaders and others in power that purposely want to keep them down.
It’s a hard novel to review, because it is simply about SO many different things. On the one hand we have the basic plot of the novel - Makhaya’s escape from South African Apartheid and the deeply embedded trauma this has caused in him. On the other, we also delve into grand questions about humanity itself, what do we need to survive, how do we live in the world once we acknowledge that some people are truly and deliberately out to hurt others? And on *another* hand (I know, too many hands!), it’s about the Batswana people, their battles with the limitations of tribalism, with colonialism, and with a sun so relentless that rain clouds gather without the rain ever falling.
This is one of those novels where the description of what it’s about really doesn’t do justice to it, because Bessie Head is brilliant at characters, and this is what makes the book. She so effortlessly creates characters in a few paragraphs that already have more depth than what it takes some novels 500 pages to do. Every character’s inner life is explored with such insight, their motivations and their idiosyncrasies, all so deftly written. Even the most minor character is brought to life, there was not a single character in the novel I couldn’t easily identify, understand, feel connected to.
I was also surprised at the humour in the novel. While the plot summary can sound dry, Bessie Head write her characters with such warmth, and isn’t afraid to acknowledge the absurdity of human beings as well. I laughed quite a few times throughout. Any novelist who can write about the worst of humanity without crushing the reader’s hope in it, gets my thumbs up.
Oddly enough, if I had to compare this to any novel, it would be Anna Karenina. I loved Tolstoy’s novel for the same reasons - the incredible character depth and insight into people. Just like Anna K, Bessie Head does spend quite a few pages describing agricultural processes, and it is here where I think she’ll lose some people. For me, it was still fascinating to read and I appreciated being able to really understand the day to day challenges of life in Golema Mmidi.
If you’re after a really plot driven novel, this isn’t for you.
Her writing is so beautiful, but she is definitely not an author that steps far away from her characters. Makhaya felt very much like Bessie’s vessel for her own anger at South Africa at times, and there are a few chapters where it feels we’re directly hearing what Bessie thinks about the treatment of women in Africa for example.
The novel really dives deep into the human relationship with the land and with each other. There is a real push and pull between the human attraction to traditionalism as ‘safe’ and the need in some individuals who push for change and improvement and have a fire in their bellies to live their own truth, to be better. We see these contrasts in the characters, in the ‘chiefs’ whose wealth literally depends on keeping the poor uneducated and uninformed. We see in Makhaya, the result of the trauma that comes from being helpless, of being treated a certain way solely due to the colour of one’s skin. He is so angry that despite being the main protagonist, he unashamedly reveals that he could quite easily see himself committing a murder if pushed even further than he has been.
I could think about these characters and story for days. Short but packed with wisdom and nuance, I wish I had read novels from Bessie Head years ago.
Though this is quite a small novel, sitting at around 200 pages, it is packed with complexity while still somehow feeling simple. On the surface, the novel is about a South African man named Makhaya, who crosses the border into Botswana as a refugee with a shady past. He finds himself in a small, rural village called Golema Mmidi, and it is here we meet the other central characters, as they fight to improve their lives while still battling the unforgiving Botswana climate, some morally vacuous leaders and others in power that purposely want to keep them down.
It’s a hard novel to review, because it is simply about SO many different things. On the one hand we have the basic plot of the novel - Makhaya’s escape from South African Apartheid and the deeply embedded trauma this has caused in him. On the other, we also delve into grand questions about humanity itself, what do we need to survive, how do we live in the world once we acknowledge that some people are truly and deliberately out to hurt others? And on *another* hand (I know, too many hands!), it’s about the Batswana people, their battles with the limitations of tribalism, with colonialism, and with a sun so relentless that rain clouds gather without the rain ever falling.
This is one of those novels where the description of what it’s about really doesn’t do justice to it, because Bessie Head is brilliant at characters, and this is what makes the book. She so effortlessly creates characters in a few paragraphs that already have more depth than what it takes some novels 500 pages to do. Every character’s inner life is explored with such insight, their motivations and their idiosyncrasies, all so deftly written. Even the most minor character is brought to life, there was not a single character in the novel I couldn’t easily identify, understand, feel connected to.
I was also surprised at the humour in the novel. While the plot summary can sound dry, Bessie Head write her characters with such warmth, and isn’t afraid to acknowledge the absurdity of human beings as well. I laughed quite a few times throughout. Any novelist who can write about the worst of humanity without crushing the reader’s hope in it, gets my thumbs up.
Oddly enough, if I had to compare this to any novel, it would be Anna Karenina. I loved Tolstoy’s novel for the same reasons - the incredible character depth and insight into people. Just like Anna K, Bessie Head does spend quite a few pages describing agricultural processes, and it is here where I think she’ll lose some people. For me, it was still fascinating to read and I appreciated being able to really understand the day to day challenges of life in Golema Mmidi.
If you’re after a really plot driven novel, this isn’t for you.
Her writing is so beautiful, but she is definitely not an author that steps far away from her characters. Makhaya felt very much like Bessie’s vessel for her own anger at South Africa at times, and there are a few chapters where it feels we’re directly hearing what Bessie thinks about the treatment of women in Africa for example.
The novel really dives deep into the human relationship with the land and with each other. There is a real push and pull between the human attraction to traditionalism as ‘safe’ and the need in some individuals who push for change and improvement and have a fire in their bellies to live their own truth, to be better. We see these contrasts in the characters, in the ‘chiefs’ whose wealth literally depends on keeping the poor uneducated and uninformed. We see in Makhaya, the result of the trauma that comes from being helpless, of being treated a certain way solely due to the colour of one’s skin. He is so angry that despite being the main protagonist, he unashamedly reveals that he could quite easily see himself committing a murder if pushed even further than he has been.
I could think about these characters and story for days. Short but packed with wisdom and nuance, I wish I had read novels from Bessie Head years ago.
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes