Intense personal experiences of South Africars"s brutal social system, a sense of stifled creativity and a distaste for politics made Bessie Head leave for Botswana on an exit permit at the age of 27. There, in her chosen rural ls"havenrs" of Serowe, and despite a severe mental breakdown, she wrote the novels and stories that earned her international recognition as one of Africars"s most remarkabble and individual writers. A Woman Alone is a collections of autobiographical writings, sketches, and essays which covers the entire span of Bessie Headrs"s creative life, up to her death in 1986 at age 49. It reveals a woman of great sensitivity and vitality, inspired through her knowledge of suffering in a ls"reverence for ordinary peoplers" and finding some healing for her own anguish in a quiet corner of Africa.