The Other Side Of Silence by Andre Brink

After years of abuse in an orphanage in Germany, Hanna decides to join one of the shiploads of woman being transported in the early twentieth century to the colony of German South -West Africa to fulfil the needs of the male settlers. After atrocious punishment for refusing to resist the advances of an army officer ,she arrives in a refuge in the African desert-‘prison, nunnery ,brothel, shithouse, Frauenstein’. When the drunken excesses of visiting army detachment threaten her only friend and companion, Katja, Hanna revolts.
Hanna and a ragtag army of females set out on an epic march through the desert to take on the might of the German Reich.