Reading 1001 discussion

I just finished A Question of Power and have to let some time go by to process it fully. I am also sure that this book needs to be read more than once.
The book describes in truly beautiful writing, a visual argument between two different sets of power that are working aggressively to kill the soul of our main character, Elizabeth. The two ends of the power struggle do not break down into good and evil and even though they lean toward the spiritual versus the sexual, that doesn't capture it either. Both characters exist in real life and are named Sello and Dan, but our main character Elizabeth does not really know them in real life. She only knows them in her dream state and in her state of mental collapse.
The reader is dragged through the total fragmentation of Elizabeth's mind and because nothing is ever explained or given any context other than through Elizabeth's mind and observations we experience the mental breakdown as she does.
In this way the book is a discussion about power, the power dynamics of mental health, but also of gender dynamics in that Elizabeth can pit the two against each other but has no way of fighting back except to persevere. She is fully submissive to these male forces.
The book also shines a light on racism as Elizabeth experienced the extreme racism of South Africa and on moving to Botswana experiences being an outsider as she is of mixed race and has no local tribal or village affiliation.
The sections in the book in which Elizabeth is acting relatively normal and we get to see her interact with Tom or Kenosi and "the small boy", who is her son, but who she does not recognize as someone to love, only someone to feed now and then, are a strange relief from the sexual screaming happening in the rest of the book.
This is a truly powerful book unlike any other I have read but it is not an enjoyable book to be so fully drowned in and yet that is the only way to read this book, to live through it.
I am giving it 4 stars but may up that after I process further.

Great review from Gail (as usual).
I have read two other books by Ms Head (The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales and When Rain Clouds Gather) and I enjoyed reading them more than I did this one. There are two interwoven stories being told, a conventional one without hallucinations and the psychotic or nearly so of Elizabeth's madness. The conventional story I liked reading, the nearly-incoherent flow of her madness, no. I suppose the creativity of that appeals to some readers/ literary critics who are looking for something different.