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Nervous Conditions
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ISBN: 978-0-9547023-3-5 | 224 pages | Weight: 0.24kg | Paperback | | Rights: World
Categories: African | Fiction | Literature |
Synopsis
"Many good novels written by men have come out of Africa, but few by Black women. This is the novel we have been waiting for... it will become a classic." Doris Lessing.
Tsitsi Dangarembga - Winner of the 1989 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
With a NEW INTRODUCTION by Anthony Kwame Appiah
Tambudzai dreams of education, but her hopes only materialise after her brother's death, when she goes to live with her uncle. At his mission school, her critical faculties develop rapidly, bringing her face to face with a new set of conflicts involving her uncle, his education and his family. Tsitsi Dangarembga's quietly devastating first novel offers a portrait of Zimbabwe, where enlightenment brings its own profound dilemmas.
Recommendations
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.
About the Author
Tsitsi Dangarembga was born and brought up in Zimbabwe. She studied medicine and psychology, before turning to writing full-time.
In addiion to Nervous Conditions, she has written a play entitled She No Longer Weeps. Today, in addition to writing, Dangarembga works as a script writer, consultant and film director.
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