Besie Head was a born writer, but one born also to a deprived childhood and a life of often recurring hardship. Indeed, her life echoes many aspects of the distressing history of South Africa in the last half-century. She was born in an asylum to a white woman who was considered mad; her father was black. Yet despite the disadvantages of being both a person of mixed race and a woman she made her way in Cape Town and Johannesburg as a journalist.

As the political crisis deepened in South Africa in the 1960s, Bessie went into exile in rural Botswana. Although her life as a refugee in Botswana was full of crises and upheavals, her creative energy was released by her adopted country and she produced stories and novels - such as Where Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, A Question of Power - that won her an international reputation.

Bessie Head - Thunder Behind Her Ears is an engrossing biography of the turbulent life of one of Africa's great writers, whose reputation is growing by the year. It describes with insight the driving force of Bessie's writing talent, her fiery personality and her often grinding circumstances.