Nervous Conditions: A Novel [Nervous Conditions #1]

A modern classic from the Booker-shortlisted author of This Mournable Body

The groundbreaking first novel in Tsitsi Dangarembga's award-winning trilogy, Nervous Conditions, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and has been "hailed as one of the 20th century's most significant works of African literature" (The New York Times). Two decades before Zimbabwe would win independence and ended white minority rule, thirteen-year-old Tambudzai Sigauke embarks on her education. 

On her shoulders rest the economic hopes of her parents, siblings, and extended family, and within her burns the desire for independence. She yearns to be free of the constraints of her rural village and thinks she's found her way out when her wealthy uncle offers to sponsor her schooling. But she soon learns that the education she receives at his mission school comes with a price.

A distinguishing feature of this work is its courageous honesty and devastating understatement.

A modern classic in the African literary canon and voted in the Top Ten Africa's 100 Best Books of the 20th Century, this novel brings to the politics of decolonization theory the energy of women's rights. An extraordinarily well-crafted work, this book is a work of vision. Through its deft negotiation of race, class, gender and cultural change, it dramatizes the 'nervousness' of the 'postcolonial' conditions that bedevil us still. In Tambu & the women of her family, we African women see ourselves, whether at home or displaced, doing daily battle with our changing world with a mixture of tenacity, bewilderment & grace.

Tsitsi Dangarembga is the author of three novels: Nervous Conditions, winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; This Mournable Body, shortlisted for the Booker Prize & The Book of Not. She won the PEN Pinter Prize in 2021 & the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. Dangarembga is also a filmmaker, playwright,...