Guardian Reviews

Nervous Conditions
by Tsitsi Dangarembga

With a NEW INTRODUCTION by Anthony Kwame Appiah Price: £8.99 Place an order for this book! ISBN: 978-0-9547023-3-5 Extent: 224 pages Publication Date: September 2004

Reviewed in 'The Guardian’s Saturday Review' Section 30 October 2004, by Elena Seymenliyska

It is the late 1960s and Tambu is a 13- year-old in rural Zimbabwe. “Although our squalor was brutal,” she says, “it was uncompromisingly ours.” Her brother Nhamo has been sent to the mission school in town, his education paid for by her uncle, the family elder. Tambu is thirsty for knowledge, and feels the injustice of being kept on the family homestead, but Nhamo tells her she’d be “better off with less thinking and more respect.” Tsitsi Dangarembga’s semi-autobiographical debut was first published in 1988, when it won a Commonwealth Writers prize. It has since become a staple on Eng Lit courses, and is now reissued with a scholarly introduction. A coming-of-age story, it ticks all the right boxes for student essayists—colonialism, gender, race—and provides a mine of information about Shona customs. Its appeal to lay readers lies with the guileless Tambu, who starts off as a rather prim little girl but turns into a perceptive and independent young woman. ES.

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