The winner of South Africa's prestigious Sunday Times/Alan Paton prize, this moving, illuminating memoir chronicles the life of an extraordinary woman in South Africa who was born in 1873 in colonial South Africa and lived through the early years of apartheid to her death in 1955. The story of Katie Makanya opens a window to a side of South African life seldom recorded, examining South Africa's patriarchal culture, customs, community traditions, poverty and hardships. Spanning two centuries and set in South Africa's major cities and towns, this memoir encompasses epoch-making events from the Boer War to the World Wars to the transition from colonialism to apartheid.