Nubes de lluvia

by Bessie Head

Tras dos años en la cárcel, Makhaya cruza la frontera de Sudáfrica a Botsuana sin más ambición que la de encontrar un lugar tranquilo donde vivir. En la aldea de Golema Mmidi se contagia del entusiasmo de Gilbert, un agrónomo inglés con ambiciosos planes de futuro que despierta la ira del cacique local. Los problemas para Gilbert y Makhaya se agravan por una terrible sequía que asola el país y unos prejuicios tribales que se convierten en verdaderos óbices para el progreso de la aldea. Solo contarán con el apoyo de las mujeres, aunque el amor que una de ellas le profesa a Makhaya y la indiferencia de este puede poner en jaque cualquier avance. La escritora sudafricana Bessie Head es una de las autoras más conocidas y admiradas de las letras africanas, aunque nunca antes se ha traducido ninguna de sus novelas al español. De corte autobiográfico y con una prosa de gran belleza,
Nubes de lluvia constituye un relato esperanzador sobre la capacidad que tiene el ser humano de enfrentarse a la arbitrariedad de las costumbres, sanar las heridas del alma y alcanzar satisfacción en los detalles sencillos de la vida.

Genres: Africa, Fiction, Botswana, African Literature, Classics, South Africa, Literature

248 pages, Paperback

First published March 28, 1969

About the author

Bessie Emery Head, 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.