Novel
Far and Beyon'
Unity Dow · 2000
Synopsis
In a village in Botswana, Mara, an illiterate mother who alone feeds her family, has lost a husband and two sons to AIDS, and seeks answers from a diviner. Her daughter Mosa, a secondary-school pupil, dreams of going far, beyond; with her brother Stan, she lives torn between the science learned at school and the ancestors honoured at home, and at school must face the sexual exploitation practised by some teachers.
Context
The author's first novel, the book appeared first in Botswana in 2000, then in Australia from Spinifex Press in 2001. It questions the practices and institutions that hold back women and girls in a patriarchal society, and the difficulty of living in the old world and the new at once. The title takes up Mosa's dream of going far. The author went on to write four more novels, among them The Screaming of the Innocent.
Who it is for
For reading, by an activist lawyer, a novel from Botswana about women in the time of AIDS.
Prizes and reception
Morag Fraser, in The Age, writes that the author describes this world the way the men and women of her country sing.
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