A Question of Madness: Re-Reading Bessie Head's A Question of Power

Abstract

In reassessing A Question of Power, widely regarded as Bessie Head’s major work, this article re-examines the biographical context in which the novel was written in order to establish its generative matrix. It then turns to key aspects of the novel and attempts to describe and analyse some of their most puzzling and inexplicable features. The article concludes with an assessment of the novel’s value in the corpus of African fiction four decades after its first appearance.