The Canadian writer Margaret Laurence (1926-1987) was the author of many novels and stories about Africa and Canada. The five Manawaka novels feature strongly etched heroines and won international acclaim.

Margaret Laurence (Jean Margaret Wemyss) was born in 1926 in Neepawa, Manitoba, Canada. Her father's family had been Scottish settlers in the district; her mother's, Irish. She was educated in Neepawa and at United College in Winnipeg, which she attended from 1944 to 1947. After graduation she worked as a reporter on the Winnipeg Citizen, a labor daily. In 1948 she married Jack Laurence, a civil engineering graduate from the University of Manitoba. In 1949 the Laurences went to England and in 1950 to Africa, where Jack Laurence was in charge of a dam-building project in Somaliland (now Somalia). In 1952 they moved to the Gold Coast (now Ghana), where they lived until 1957. Their daughter, Jocelyn, was born during a leave in England in 1952; their...