Tsitsi Dangarembga’s debut novel Nervous Conditions (1988) was the first by a black Zimbabwean woman to be published in English. In 2018, it was named by the BBC as one of the top 100 books to have shaped the world. Dangarembga published a sequel, The Book of Not, in 2016 and This Mournable Body is the third book in this series, although it can be read as a standalone novel.
Dangarembga returns to the story of Tambu—a teenager in Nervous Conditions, now a single middle-aged woman. Having recently left her disappointing job as an advertising copywriter, she is living in a women’s hostel in Harare.
Her lack of options haunts her: “Fear, your recurrent dread that you have not made enough progress toward security and a decent living, prickles like pins and needles.”
