''When Rain Clouds Gather'' is a 1968 novel by South African- Motswana author Bessie Head. Head wrote the novel while in exile in Botswana in 1967.

Plot

Makehaya escapes

Apartheid South Africa Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

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. Bargueño wrote that the book emphasises the twin aspects of hope and despair, and that it depicts

love Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of meanings is that the love o ...

as "a magical force that can overcome insuperable challenges", an idea not present in Head's 1971 work ''A Question of Power'', written after her

nervous breakdown A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitt ...

Helen Oyeyemi Helen Oyeyemi FRSL (born 10 December 1984) is a British novelist and writer of short stories. Life Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria and was raised in Lewisham, South London from when she was four. Oyeyemi wrote her first novel, '' The Icarus Girl ...

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 The Big Jubilee Read is a 2022 campaign to promote reading for pleasure and to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II. A list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, 10 from each decade of Elizabeth II's reign, was selected by a panel of ...

, a list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors produced to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's

Platinum Jubilee A platinum jubilee is a celebration held to mark an anniversary. Among monarchies, it usually refers to a 70th anniversary. The most recent monarch to celebrate a platinum jubilee is Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and the other C ...

References

1968 novels Apartheid novels Botswana in fiction Farms in fiction {{1960s-novel-stub