Novel
Nervous Conditions
Tsitsi Dangarembga · 1988
Synopsis
In the Rhodesia of the sixties, Tambudzai, daughter of Shona peasants, wants to go to school, but her father refuses to pay, and the family reserves this chance for her brother Nhamo, whom their uncle Babamukuru, headmaster of a mission school, takes into his home. Tambu grows her own maize to earn her school fees. When Nhamo dies suddenly, in 1968, it is she whom the uncle welcomes to the mission, where her cousin Nyasha awaits her, back from five years in England and become a stranger to the language of her people.
Context
The novel appeared in London in 1988 from The Women's Press, two hundred and four pages; it was the first book published in English by a black Zimbabwean woman. Partly autobiographical, it takes its title from a sentence by Sartre, in the preface to Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, on the nervous condition of the native. The author gave it two sequels, in 2006 and 2018, which form a trilogy with it. Albin Michel published in 1991 the French translation by Étienne Galle, under the title À fleur de peau.
Who it is for
In English, a little over two hundred pages. The narrative is told by Tambu as an adult, looking back on her adolescence; it assumes familiarity with the colonial regime of Rhodesia.
Prizes and reception
Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Africa region, in 1989; selected by the BBC in 2018 among the one hundred books that shaped the world.