When Rain Clouds Gather

Bessie Head’s first novel combines her characteristically evocative, descriptive style with a direct, powerfully opinionated narrative voice. When Rain Clouds Gather is the story of Makhaya, who goes into exile in Botswana from apartheid South Africa (as Head herself did in 1964). His new life in the village of Golema Mmidi is fraught with challenges both personal and political – and at the intersection of the two.