This Mournable Body

Nervous Conditions #3

by Tsitsi Dangarembga

A searing novel about the obstacles facing women in Zimbabwe, by one of the country’s most notable authors

Anxious about her prospects after leaving a stagnant job, Tambudzai finds herself living in a run-down youth hostel in downtown Harare. For reasons that include her grim financial prospects and her age, she moves to a widow’s boarding house and eventually finds work as a biology teacher. But at every turn in her attempt to make a life for herself, she is faced with a fresh humiliation, until the painful contrast between the future she imagined and her daily reality ultimately drives her to a breaking point.

In This Mournable Body, Tsitsi Dangarembga returns to the protagonist of her acclaimed first novel, Nervous Conditions, to examine how the hope and potential of a young girl and a fledgling nation can sour over time and become a bitter and floundering struggle for survival. As a last resort, Tambudzai takes an ecotourism job that forces her to return to her parents’ impoverished homestead. It is this homecoming, in Dangarembga’s tense and psychologically charged novel, that culminates in an act of betrayal, revealing just how toxic the combination of colonialism and capitalism can be.

Genres: Fiction, Africa, Zimbabwe, Literary Fiction, African Literature, Contemporary, Audiobook

284 pages, Paperback

First published August 7, 2018

About the author

Spent part of her childhood in England. She began her education there, but concluded her A-levels in a missionary school back home, in the town of Mutare. She later studied medicine at Cambridge University, but became homesick and returned home as Zimbabwe's black-majority rule began in 1980.

She took up psychology at the University of Zimbabwe, of whose drama group she was a member. She also held down a two-year job as a copywriter at a marketing agency. This early writing experience gave her an avenue for expression: she wrote numerous plays, such as The Lost of the Soil, and then joined the theatre group Zambuko, and participated in the production of two plays, Katshaa and Mavambo.

In 1985, Dangarembga published a short story in Sweden called The Letter. In 1987, she also published the play She Does Not Weep in Harare. At the age of twenty-five, she had her first taste of success with her novel Nervous Conditions. The first in English ever written by a black Zimbabwean woman, it won the African section of the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1989. Asked about her subsequent prose drought, she explained, "There have been two major reasons for my not having worked on prose since Nervous Conditions: firstly, the novel was published only after I had turned to film as a medium; secondly, Virginia Woolf's shrewd observation that a woman needs £500 and a room of her own in order to write is entirely valid. Incidentally, I am moving and hope that, for the first time since Nervous Conditions, I shall have a room of my own. I'll try to ignore the bit about £500."

Dangarembga continued her education later in Berlin at the Deutsche Film und Fernseh Akademie, where she studied film direction and produced several film productions, including a documentary for German television. She also made the film Everyone's Child, shown worldwide including at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.

Reviews

[Marchpane · Rating 4 out of 5]

BOOKER PRIZE 2020 SHORTLISTED

This Mournable Body gives us an embittered, complex protagonist in Tambu—and she is just the kind of difficult, murky character that I’m drawn to. This novel delves into: female ambition; getting sold a version of success that doesn’t match reality; the legacy of colonialism—all through the life of one woman.

When Tambu was a girl from a small village she managed, through her own initiative and drive, to gain access to a middle-class education at a mostly white convent school in the capital. Now in adulthood, Tambu can’t understand why, despite all her advantages, she hasn’t been able to unlock success$mdas;and she is corrosively envious of others who have.

Tambu doesn’t fit anywhere. She didn’t go off to college in Europe, like her cousin Nyasha; nor has she built a glittering career like her (white) school frenemy Tracey, as Tambu fully expected of herself. She didn’t fight and sacrifice in the war, like her aunt and sister. Her education has alienated her from her parents and other relatives in the village, and to her great shame, she can’t even afford to send money home to them. While others have found a place, or at least some solidarity, in the new Zimbabwe, Tambu has found only resentment and self-recrimination.

Have you ever done something stupid and thought “you idiot!”? Not, “I’m an idiot”, but YOU. This novel is written in the second person and captures this accusatory tone of negative self-talk. Tambu feels a failure so her internal monologue has devolved into second person POV. As the reader, you are Tambu but you are also YOU, implicated and copping the brunt of this negativity. It’s harsh and confronting to read. After a while you begin to notice it less, this YOU, but it swims back into view now and then, to lambast you once more.

Everything from narrative structure to syntax takes a roundabout path. The timeline moves forward linearly, but the sense of it often moves sideways or backwards, holding back puzzle pieces to be revealed later. Tambu will act, for example accosting a stranger who resembles someone from her past, or sabotaging herself in a new job by lashing out violently, and it’s not for several chapters that we fully grasp what’s happened and why. Characters appear in Tambu’s thoughts long before they join the story. Tambu’s indirectness and equivocation distorts events and hides truths from herself, and thus from the reader too.

To be fair, this novel is the third in a trilogy. Readers who have already read the first two instalments probably hold most of those puzzle pieces already, making for a very different reading experience. Taken as a standalone, the novel requires effort and its roundaboutness will be frustrating for many. I too was frustrated to begin with, but soon found the effect intriguing. Tambu’s personal history was revealed to me slowly, explaining her psychology and motivations in tandem with a story depicting her further unravelling. Rather than being on her side from the beginning, I was presented with a deeply unsympathetic character and gradually found a path to understanding her—a woman whose desire for status culminates in her betrayal of her country and her own family.

This is a long review, so I’ll stop here but there is so much more to unpack (the traumas of war; the neo-colonialism of global capital; poverty tourism) in this relatively short novel. The more I think about it, the more I find to appreciate, and I really hope that This Mournable Body features on this year’s Booker Prize shortlist. 4+ stars.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had the pleasure to put some questions to the author on BBC Radio 4 Front Row in October. The recording covers my question on the first line of the novel (at 17:20-19:05).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...

Now shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize.

It is the third part of a trilogy – after the much read and studied (but I must confess new to me) “Nervous Conditions” (considered something of a classic of African literature) and the far more unheralded “The Book of Not”.

I read both books before I read this one and I am glad I did: the books function as direct sequels to each other (each taking up where the previous volume left off) and I really don’t think it is possible to appreciate the nuances of this book without having read the first two (see below).

My two reviews are here

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The Book of Not finishes with Tambu having lost her job (quitting after having had her work appropriated by a white, male colleague) and facing the imminent loss of her hostel accommodation (as the Matron makes it clear it is time for her to move on and sets her up for an interview with an old acquaintance). Tambu’s closing words “So this evening I walked emptily to the room I would soon vacate, wondering what the future there was for me, a new Zimbabwean”

This book answers that question and the answer, particularly initially, is a bleak one.

Very much in contrast to the first 1.75 books (but foreshadowed by the final part of “The Book of Not”) Tambu (the same driven and achieving Tambu that planted her own field of maize as a young child to try and pay her own school fees; and who later won a scholarship to the school’s most prestigious school where she then proceeded to get the best O’Level results) is effectively now both despondent and under-achieving: haunted by her past failures, blaming herself both for her A level performance (which bought her academic aspirations to a crashing halt) and her impulsive decision to quit her job.

When you were young and in fighting spirit, growing mealie cobs in the family field and selling them to raise money for your school fees, you were not this person that you have become. When and how did it happen? When you were amongst the brightest, in spite of running kilometres to school and studying beside a sooty candle? No, it couldn’t have been then either. Nor was it in the days that followed at middle school at your uncle’s mission, where you remained focused on a better life and so continued to excel. This leaves only your secondary school, the Young Ladies’ College of the Sacred Heart. It must have been there that your metamorphosis took place. Yet how awful it is to admit that closeness to white people at the convent had ruined your heart, had caused your womb, from which you reproduced yourself before you gave birth to anything else, to shrink between your hip bones.

The title of the book is taken from a Teju Cole New Yorker essay “Unmournable Bodies” one prompted by the Western reaction to the Charlie Hebdo killings which (among other things) effectively asked why only certain violent deaths are considered worthy of reaction.

The author of this novel has explained:

I extrapolated that question to living bodies. Basically I asked the question whether, if we could mourn the circumstance of certain living bodies we might not create a better world. At the same time those living bodies also need to mourn themselves in order to begin to heal and move forward …my observation has been that women often find it difficult to mourn themselves and their circumstances. In Zimbabwe today a lot of women think they are born to put up with all sorts of abuse, beginning in the families they are born into and equally in the families they marry into. It is the idea that society foists on women that suffering is a woman’s lot. …. Such women do not know how to mourn their circumstances. It’s a question of being allowed to grieve for yourself. One has to see oneself as worthy to be able to grieve about the negative things that happen to one. Grieving and mourning are active. You feel and you wade through the feelings. With depression one does not wade through but more or less drowns. Grieving and mourning, because they are active, pull one through, in spite of being terribly difficult. This, I think, is true whether one is grieving or mourning for oneself, or for someone else. I think that many Zimbabweans have not begun to mourn their situation actively yet. They are still denying it so as not to feel the pain.

And I think that quote explains much of the nature of this book. We (at least if we have read the first two books) know the real story behind both the A Levels and the advertising agency job – and can see that rather than grieving/mourning Tambu is effectively affected by depression. She does belatedly recognise the impact of racism and colonialism on her life (something her cousin Nyasha – like the second book, a much lesser presence her unfortunately than in the first book albeit with her backstory now even more clearly based on that of the author’s – Germany, filmmaker etc).

At the same time a wider past and shame haunts her in different ways: the violent past that lead to her sister losing a leg (in the unforgettable image that started the second book) and her family patriarch Uncle being accidentally paralysed; the role of various of her family members (particularly Aunt Lucia) in the liberation struggle; the poverty of her mother (as well as more unspoken in this book her terrible act of family betrayal). All issues she largely tried to ignore in the second book other than if she felt they threatened her ambitions to succeed in a white school.

All of this leads to a breakdown as she violently assaults a pupil in a teaching job she takes – not the first or last piece of behaviour by Tambu in this book which is at the same time harsh and exclusionary to others and self-destructive (another set piece sees her deliberately fail to come to the aid of a fellow hostel member being assaulted by a mob).

Tambu we have to conclude is suffering from what Sartre wrote in his introduction to Frantz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth” is a “a nervous condition introduced and maintained by the settler among the colonized people with their consent.” – the quote which gave the title to the first book (in the second book we see her consenting to this process).

The real narrative in the book only really starts when Tambu meets up with Tracey – her boss in her second job but also of course the person who inadvertently changes the course of Tambu’s life when she takes the honours for which Tambu has strived for such a period of time and on which she had based her entire future – and this leads to a series of scenes of an authentic holiday company which (slightly out of kilter with much of the book) verge on the satirical.

Another notable feature of the book is how it is written in the second person. But this is very much second person narration used as a different and more distanced way of conveying a first person viewpoint (the author has said “Often when we talk we use “you” when we mean “I”. So that was the sense in which I used it.”)

The author attributes the second person to her not being able to face what Tambu was going through via the first person and feeling that readers (presumably those who had followed her through the first two books) would feel the same.

I wrote it in the second person because that was the only way I could access the subject matter in a way that I felt made sense. I just didn’t have the heart to use the first person. I needed distance and I imagined the reader would to. On the other hand, I didn’t want to jump into the third person when the other two books were in the first. I also thought that might be too much distance. So I tried it out in the second and I liked the effect.

At the same time it means we have less of a distance to Tambu than in the first two books – as we sit alongside her observing her life and behaviour.

You drop your gaze but do not walk off because on the one hand you are hemmed in by the crowd. On the other, if you return to solitude, you will fall back inside yourself where there is no place to hide.

Further, when the second book keep circling around the Shona concept of Unhu and particularly the greeting (which more signifies an entire worldview) “Tiripo, kana makadini wo!” (“I am well, if you are well too.”) and Tambu's difficulty in seeing how the concept applies in the new world she is entering: then the move from an "I" to a "you" narration takes on an added significance. What happens when someone cannot even care for their own wellness – when the “you” is the “I”.

At her lowest moment in the second book Tambu says the following (which seemed to me to foreshadow the change of person).

Truly I could not imagine that I should have looked around me I another way, and analysed what was taking place from my own perspective. For do that one requires a point of view, but it is hard to stand upon the foundations you re born with in order to look forward, when that support is bombarded by all that is around until what remains firm and upright is hidden beneath rubble and ruins.

The interaction of this book with the first two books is interesting. It is not as though the book does not fill in the backstory – almost all major developments in the first two book are set out here in outlines (probably more so than I would expect from the third part of a trilogy). But also surprised how misleading an impression that the "outlines" give (and I think evidenced by some comments I have seen on the third book from reviewers who have not read the first two). Tambu in the third book in particular is an unreliable narrator - particularly when describing her own life via the more distanced second person voice – all of course part of her struggle to properly mourn.

I feel that trying to understand Tambu on this book only is similar to trying to understand present day Zimbabwe by reference to current events (and perhaps a Wiki outline of its history).

The book is much more symbolic than the first two: a hyena reappears when Tambu’s grip on reality is least strong; a bag of mealie sent by her mother, one which she seems unable to either use of lose and one which gradually rots and decays both represents I think the burden of her shame at her village past (a shame which has almost physical impacts at times) and foreshadows the actions of her mother late in the book which end up forcing Tambu to repeat the actions of the second book and resign from a job.

Overall I think this is a difficult book to read as a standalone one as evidenced by the reviews of many Goodreads whose reviews I closely follow: Tambu as a character in this book can be hard to understand or like; the book can feel very oblique at times; the choice of a second person voice is rarely optimal.

However as the intense and difficult end to an important trilogy - and one which has reflected the difficult pre and post independence journey of her country via Tambu, I think it is a very worthwhile read.

Thanks to Faber and Faber also for an ARC via NetGalley.

[Meike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade 2021
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020
First of all a major shout-out to this year's Booker judges for including a novel from Zimbabwe - needless to say, the prize is often way too Euro-centric. By including texts like this, the Western readership gets duly challenged, because the story is not easy to understand and appreciate for people who are more or less unfamiliar with the country and its history. Our protagonist is Tambudzai Sigauke, a traumatized woman nearing 40 who struggles in a sexist, racist, post-colonial and post-war society. Tambu has two degrees, but abandoned a job as a copy writer because she could not deal with the fact that her white colleagues took credit for her ideas. Now she is descending into poverty, trying desperately to find a constant, affordable home, even contemplating to build security via marrying the son of a landlady or a foreigner - and she does not give up: Applying for jobs, fighting severe mental health problems brought about by trauma, trying to preserve her optimism in a hostile environment facing humiliation again and again. In the end, colonialism and capitalism culminate in eco-tourism targeted at (mainly) Europeans, a field in which Tambu gets a job. And the shocking core of the story is this: How do you judge people from a moral point of view when they are in situation where they are trying to survive? As Brecht put it in The Threepenny Opera: "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann die Moral." (First comes a full stomach, then comes ethics.) This is a dog-eat-dog society, and if you're a Black woman without a man, you're in serious trouble.

The whole book is written in a detached "you"-voice, thus underlining the alienation Tambu feels - she constantly seems to wonder whether the person who is undergoing all of these experiences is still her, how all of this could happen and keeps on happening. While "This Mournable Body" is the final installment of a trilogy and reading the first two parts would probably help understand the whole ordeal, the main challenge really is to get some information about Zimbabwe and what it must be like to live through such times. This is a very, very dark historical novel. The story alludes to the colonial era, the war of independence and its victims, the brutal agricultural reforms, corruption and institutionalized racism, a system that is designed to hold certain people back.

The book is set in the late 1990s, so during the dictatorship of Mugabe when the economic decline and hyperinflation started to take a toll on the young nation that had only gained independence from Britain in 1980. Quick personal story: When I studied in the States in the mid-2000, I had a fellow student from Zimbabwe who spoke the Queen's English (educated in a British school in Harare) and utterly refused to tell us any stories from his home country: He said it was so terrible that we wouldn't believe it. I have to admit that this book gave me a better idea of what he might have referred to.

Which brings us to the fact that Tambu's experiences are beyond anything that we might imagine, and some reactions to the novel give me flashbacks to The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, where a number of readers complained that the whole thing was a mess and not understandable although the book was clearly written for an Indian audience that was able to recognize all the political circumstances portrayed - so not everything Westerners do not immediately get is badly written, sometimes Westerners are just badly informed. This also goes for Tsitsi Dangarembga's book.

So I'm glad I read the book and learnt something new, although I could not really find access to the text. Maybe I should be grateful for that.

[Lorraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emotionally and socially evocative. The second person narrative is brutal and harsh. The "You" is so accusatory and reproachful. Like a castigation. Throughout all four parts of the book I felt like the author was chastising Tambu for having wasted opportunities thrown her way. On the other hand, it read like the author wanted to put Tambu's story to rest. Like a load to be shed. Load - shedding.

While Zimbabwe was burning, Tambu was cushioned in a private school. Eating hearty meals. Learning with white children. While her Aunt Lucia was fighting a war she didn't understand, a war which caused loss of limb and saw her hobbling back home with two foreign children, Concept and Freedom, her concept of freedom, Tambu was traversing lecture halls at the university. Learning with white people white things which were going to propell Zimbabwe into prosperity. Years later, she has nothing to show of all this elite education she acquired while her village was vanishing from unrealised dreams. While her mother was faithfully enduring her marriage. She didn't let her parents show off her education. She deprived them of an opportunity to boast. Big renovated house?, no. Plumbing? no. Electricity? no. Truckloads of supplies at month end? no. Instead, her mother sends her a sack of mealie meal through Aunt Lucia's war veteran friend who ends up living with a family Tambu is lodging from.

Mealie meal. What a brutally symbolic gesture which remains uneaten for years. Like Tambu's dreams, it rots and decays right in front of her eyes and there's nothing she does about it. She is like the walking dead. Tambu is suffering psychological but she doesn't acknowledge this mental breaking down. A gradual process culminating in disastrous consequences dismantling the already crumbling family structure.

"This Mournable Body" is a literal manifestation of what happens to a black woman, physically and psychologically, in Africa fighting not only patriarchal structures but struggling against misogyny, racism and imperialism. Tambu's narrative is not unique to Zimbabwe. As a South African black woman, I carry remnants of Tambu in my being on the daily. Feelings of being inadequate. Not good enough. Of not having made it despite having all these opportunities,which my mother never had, at my disposal. It eats away at your spirit. You loose your joie de vivre. Your essence is slowly corroded and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. This Mournable Body is the reason active feminism is for everybody.

I saw my younger self in Tambu. I too felt, many moons ago, that all we needed, as black people, was education and then we could build wealth and establish trust funds for our grandkids. The world showed me. Chewed and spat me out. Tambu's relationship with Nyasha. So real. That is exactly how it plays out in the real world. Race. Bloody race. What a mess. If you are going to marry a white man, he better be rich. Why a black girl be struggling with a European when you can endure the same struggle with a black brother????? He better come with a castle and a knighthood.

Reading this as a black woman was a very emotional journey. We should all mourn for our bodies. They carry so much. Absorb so much but are never given space and time to expel at leisure. Until these bodies break, nobody cares. Self care is a priority. I recommended every black girl read the trilogy. It is definitely what the doctor ordered.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 5 out of 5]

You feel you are creeping up over the edge of a precipice and that this cliff beckons you; worse, that you have a secret desire to fall over its edge into oblivion and that there is no way to stop that fall because you are the precipice.

This has been a fascinating reread as my original rating of this book (review below) when I read it as a standalone was 3-stars: re-reading it now as the third part of the Nervous Conditions trilogy, it jumped up to 5-stars. It is, then, a book which requires context. And, especially, a sense of how Tambu, the narrator, has changed from the spirited girl who once came up with a scheme to grow and sell mealies in order to fund her own education that her parents couldn't afford.

Now Tambu is so self-alienated that she is 'you' throughout, scarred by her experiences in the multiracial convent school, in her job as a copywriter (both covered in The Book of Not) and the bloody war for independence about which she can barely bring herself to speak, turning away both mentally and physically from the trauma.

I deliberately don't want to talk about plot because one of the things that I love about this book is how unexpected it is. We expect a certain type of trajectory but Dangarembga pulls off something quite different, though always psychologically convincing even while there are moments of surreal hyper-realism. Her use of symbols, too, is exemplary: the Princess Di shoes first mentioned in Nervous Conditions; the bag of mealie meal that follows Tambu around however much she tries to forget it. And, in a kind of ring composition, we end the book back at the homestead in Tambu's village - though a different place in itself and in her plans from what it once was.

Most of all, Tambu is one of the most compelling and memorable anti-heroines in contemporary fiction, with a depth of characterisation that makes her 'real' even while she's a kind of troubled avatar for Zimbabwe herself.

With a formidable theoretical underpinning of Fanon, Sartre, Teju Cole and - surely? - Audrey Lorde (especially The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House?), and a partial reworking of The Bell Jar, this merges an acute awareness of how the forces of race, gender, religion, class may put pressure on how an individual may be, while never losing sight of the story.

Startling, inventive, conceived by a creative intelligence that it also fiercely ironic, and lit with a dark, dark, almost surreal humour at times, this is an outstanding trio of books - just, from my experience, do treat it as a trilogy that tells an organic and unified tale.

(Original review below)
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I found this an uneven and difficult novel that has important things to contemplate and say and yet which is also somewhat difficult to read. What I like is the way the language is alight with the cadences of (I'm presuming here) Zimbabwean English: there's a linguistic energy that counters the depressed state of the narrator which keeps some kind of momentum in play. I also think the 2nd person 'you' works well to convey the self-alienated state of the narrator.

The material is fascinating as, with a light touch, it sketches in the history of Zimbabwe and makes our narrator a kind of stand-in for the country: once young, buoyant, optimistic and determined to overcome the vagaries of history and colonial exploitation to create a self-autonomy and self-determined destiny; now jaded, older if not wiser, close to collapse, betrayed by both 'culture' and her own self, too easily turning to violence, exploitation and betrayal herself. An early scene that takes place between a housemate and a bus driver is profoundly shocking, as is our narrator's participation in it. And the book culminates in a kind of blacker-than-black satire/comedy-horror as we see female bodies treated as mere tourist souvenirs, objects for a form of capitalist entertainment that reimposes colonialist structures.

Yet, for all this good stuff, I found the writing disjointed and often over-written: 'now squeezing into [a skirt] is a major assault on the pachyderm. The zip bites at your skin with treacherous teeth'; 'sweat runs down your face. It slithers into your eyes. It gushes out of your armpits mingled with antiperspirant'.

I can see why this is on the Booker longlist and especially like the way the unlikeable anti-heroine is also made to be someone with whom we can empathise: perhaps we are able to mourn for her body, traumatised in so many not always seen ways, even if she herself cannot.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful addition to the Nervous Conditions series by the great Zimbabwe writer TsiTsi Dangarembga following her protagonist Tambuzai’s trials and tribulations following her exit from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in The Book of Not. It is extremely well-written and an excellent analysis of ingrained colonial mindsets (the series title, after all, coming from Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth which described this to a “t”) and shows the brutal abuse of women in the newly liberated Zimbabwe at all levels of society. Tambu has fallen from grace and has yet further to fall as her perceptions of inequality erode her ability to even function sanely in society. We see characters we knew from the previous books, particularly the irritatingly successful Tracey as well as her family. The denouement back in her village was particularly well-written and pushed this one into 5-star territory for me. The writer demonstrates that sensitive, gifted individuals like Tambu can only absorb so much of the violence they observe before seeing their own interval restraints blown away. If only Tambu could fully know herself, but she is still stripping off layers of imposed thinking and learning even at this late stage.
It is a powerful and artful book and, in this reader’s opinion, probably more deserving of last year’s Booker Prize than Shuggie Bain.

A good quote:
"I'll get to them," promises Nyasha. "It's just that no one has taken
the trouble. Not seriously. They see what they see, right? And no one
has taught those poor young people anything different.'
You grow increasingly galled by your cousin and her assumption
that everyone has the luxury she has of surviving without being ob-
sessed with one's own person. All three of them think that now she has
taken you out of the institution into her care, everything is wonderful
for you. They do not know what it is to struggle with the prospect that
the hyena is you, nor how this combat marshals in the task of finishing
the brutish animal off, while ensuring you remain alive yourself. You
squash an ant scuttling over the table and raise your finger to inspect its
crushed black body, but your finger is clean. (p. 149)

You rummage in the pile, pulling out books at random and not put-
ting them back. The pungency of past decades percolates up: girls wear-
in lace gloves and veils to Sunday Mass, eating at heavy wooden tables
set with white cloth napkins in silver rings, the constant tension from
not knowing whether or not you were as you were meant to be, the bru-
tal fighting to answer affirmatively that question, and its damage. (p. 240)
It is interesting to note that in this series, Dangarembga wrote the first book Nervous Conditions in the third person (an omniscient narrator), the second book The Book of Not in the first person singular (Tambu's voice), and then this third book in the second person (the "you"). It is as if we approach her character first from the outside, then she has Tambu speak to us directly, and finally she invites us to live thru Tambu's eyes. A fascinating idea, don't you think?

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020
I should start with a caveat - Dangarembga's first novel Nervous Conditions is regarded as a classic, and this book is at least partly a sequel to it, but I have never read it. I read this one because it was the first of my Booker longlist order to arrive.

I found the first half a little monotonous, perhaps because Dangarembga's main protagonist Tambudzai seems to have brought a lot of her problems on herself, and is not a particularly easy character to relate to, so her catalogue of misfortunes seems less tragic than it would otherwise. We meet her as a jobseeker in a hostel for young people in Harare, where she is under pressure to move out because she is now older than their age limit. In the first part Ebbing she moves out of the hostel and into a decaying house owned by once rich widow Mai Manyanga. We learn that she has left her relatively well paid job at an advertising agency because she feels her contributions are exploited by white colleagues and are inadequately recognised. Here her background in a poor rural village catches up with her when Mai Manyanga's niece Christine moves in. Christine is a war widow from the same area and knows Tambudzai's family. After a largely fruitless job search she resolves to go back to schoolteaching, and gets a job in a girls' school where she fails to keep order and eventually reaches a breaking point where she assaults an innocent pupil.

The second part Suspended opens with Tambu in hospital, where she is visited by Christine and members of her family. She is eventually offered accommodation by a cousin and her German academic husband and their children, and although this family is fairly poor she does little to help them.

I found the later parts of the book more compulsive and liked it enough to see why the book has been longlisted. In the third part Arriving, Tambu starts a new job with an eco-tourism company run by a white farmer's daughter Tracey, who is also Tambu's former schoolfriend and boss at the advertising agency. This section reaches its climax when war veterans invade Tracey's brother's farm, where she has been taking tour parties, and Tracey puts Tambu under pressure to move the operation to a new location in Tambu's old village.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book purely because it was included on the 2020 Booker Prize longlist. I have to confess to complete ignorance of both this book and this author (which is one things I like about The Booker - the chance to discover new authors). It was also only part way through the book that I realised or discovered that it is the third part of a trilogy. Whilst I like The Booker for the new authors it takes me to, I have to say I dislike it when it picks books that are part of a sequence (unless they are the first part, of course).

Having now read This Mournable Body, but not having read either of the preceding two parts, I think I can say that reading parts one and two is not absolutely essential to prepare for this third part. There are clear references in this book to events that are, presumably, covered in the earlier books, but you can normally read between the lines and work out what has happened. That said, I am sure that reading the first two parts would enhance your experience of this book. Too late for me, of course.

I find myself somewhat conflicted at the end of this book. I can clearly see that it deals with important topics. And it gives me a view into a way of life that I know nothing about in a culture that I know very little about which, after all, is one of the main reasons for reading books. But the truth is that I didn’t really enjoy reading the book.

Our protagonist is Tambudzai (Tambu) and she is now in her late thirties. This is her story as she moves out of a hostel (where she breaks the age rule) and tries to build a life in Harare in the late 1990s. The depiction of Harare is very interesting for someone, like me, who knows very little about the city. At first, the novel feels a bit like my limited experience of Ottessa Moshfegh as it follows a young girl who clearly has some issues relating to other people and as there are sometimes mentions of bodily fluids etc.. But the narrative never really settles into a story: it’s more episodes that link together but somehow feel disjointed.

Where the first two novels in the trilogy were narrated in the first person, this novel shifts to the second person. I read that this was a very deliberate choice by the author but I am not sure how well it works, at least for me. The second person combines with Tambu’s issues to hold the reader at a distance. Add to this the fact that several of the toughest scenes in the book are written very obliquely and you may find yourself (I did) having to read some passages several times to work out what just happened. The author has a habit of jumping ahead slightly and then going back to provide the details which can be a bit disorienting.

It is clear that this book is addressing some important topics. I just wish I could have settled to the style enough to appreciate it better.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Your lack of choices confronts you angrily. But once more you tell yourself on oath you will not succumb to more bad energy than you already have.
from the earlier version of this novel, then titled Chronicle of an Indomitable Daughter

This Mournable Body is the third and last of the trilogy which began with Nervous Conditions and continued with The Book of Not, focused around the character of Tambudzai (Tambu), aged 13 when the trilogy commences in 1968. Nervous Conditions takes us (I think) to the early 1970s, and the Book of Not takes us through 18 April 1980, Zimbabwean Independence Day and into the early 1980s and this Mournable Body through to around the end of the 1990s, each novel picking up immediately where the last left off.

In the two previous novels we saw how Tambu strived to overcome the treble disadvantages of her poverty, her race, in a white-dominated Rhodesia, and her gender, in a patriachal system, rising to become the top O-level student in the most prestiguous, multi-racial, boarding school in the country, the Young Ladies’ College of the Sacred Heart. Later in her career as an advertising copywriter, one of her campaigns won awards.

But the Tambu in this novel is a rather different character, broken in spirit, unsure of her own identity. And the root cause of that is tied to the appropriation of her success by white classmates and colleagues. The trophy for best O level student was, despite Tambu's better results, given to a white girl, Tracey, (with the excuse that she was more of an all-rounder via her sporting skills). Tambu's A level results* suffered badly from her depression after that event, racial segregation meaning she couldn't attend some A level classes and had to rely on notes from white classmates, and the news that the family of one of her dormmates had been slaughtered in the civil war.

When you were young and in fighting spirit, growing mealie cobs in the family field and selling them to raise money for your school fees, you were not this person that you have become. When and how did it happen? When you were amongst the brightest, in spite of running kilometres to school and studying beside a sooty candle? No, it couldn't have been then either. Nor was it in the days that followed at middle school at your uncle's mission, where you remained focused on a better life and so continued to excel. This leaves only your secondary school, the Young Ladies' College of the Sacred Heart. It must have been there that your metamorphosis took place. Yet how awful it is to admit that closeness to white people at the convent had ruined your heart, had caused your womb, from which you reproduced yourself before you gave birth to anything else, to shrink beneath your hip bones.

(*In what seemed to me a small continuity error, this novel has Tambu resitting her A levels to obtain better, if still by her standards mediocre, grades, which didn't seem to feature in the earlier novel)

And Tambu resigned from the advertising agency (where Tracey also worked in a more senior position) when credit for her award-winning campaign was given to an older, white, colleague.

As the Book of Not ends and this novel begins, she is unemployed, and this diminished Tambu is reflected in the rather lowkey opening chapter. Whereas we had the dramatic openings of her brother's death in the first novel and her freedom-fighter sister losing a leg in an explosion in the second, here Tambu, at the urging of her boarding house owner who seems keen she lives, visits another boarding house owned by an elderly white lady, where she humiliatingly fails to get a job as a live-in maid.

This novel was originally entitled Chronicle of an Indomitable Daughter but the author changed the title following an essay "Unmournable Bodies" by Teju Cole in the New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cul...), as Dangarembga has explained:

“That essay pointed out how the world reacted to the Charlie Hebdo Massacre, but rarely reacts to massacres in Africa. Teju Cole asks us why we mourn the death of some bodies but not the death of other bodies. I extrapolated that question to living bodies. Basically I asked the question whether, if we could mourn the circumstance of certain living bodies we might not create a better world. At the same time those living bodies also need to mourn themselves in order to begin to heal and move forward.”

This Mournable Body also sees a narrative shift into the second person, albeit one that can be taken as Tambu herself using that tense to herself. The author has explained it as in part representing her own reluctance to use the 'I' form for this rather less successful Tambu, but it also has the effect of distancing the perspective, and worked, for me very effectively:

“I wrote it in the second person because that was the only way I could access the subject matter in a way that I felt made sense. I just didn’t have the heart to use the first person. I needed distance and I imagined the reader would to. On the other hand, I didn’t want to jump into the third person when the other two books were in the first. I also thought that might be too much distance. So I tried it out in the second and I liked the effect.”

And the story takes us through the lows - Tambu's job as a teacher ends abruptly when she suffers a breakdown and violently assaults a pupil - and the seeming highs - reuniting with Tracey for an, at first successful, eco-tourism adventure, rekindling her entreprenurial spirit albeit her creativity is diminished - of Tambu's adventure to middle-age.

The end of the novel is particularly effective, reintroducing the reader to Tambu's home village and family (rather absent from The Book of Not) and with a very neat parallel to the beginning of the Book of Not. That book began, in the homestead, with the arresting, and horrifying, image of her sister's severed leg arcing through the air to become wedged in a tree. Here, back in the village, it is a German tourist's camera that completes a similar journey, flung by Tambu's irate mother. And then in a brief what happened next coda, Tambu is re-taught by her freedom fighter Aunt, now running a successful security business, the importance of 'unhu' another key concept from the earlier novel.

A worthy inclusion on the Booker shortlist and a possible winner.

[Jerrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had trouble getting past the fact that this book is written in second person POV. The protagonist is a hapless young woman who makes multiple errors in judgment throughout the course of the book. I felt like I was being lectured the whole time.
The book does effectively highlight issues faced by young women and the poor, but the whole plot seemed to be following the protagonist as she flounders along among a string of failures.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh yes, the impression a book leaves when it is so authentically pained, with a 'voice' so convincing, prose so lucid in its depiction of this main character you eagerly follow as she traverses a flailing mind; a book so opulent in its descriptions of place and people.

You gravitated to the novel because of its title, this mournable body. You learn later that Teju Cole's essay title, "Unmournable Bodies," was the inspiration.

You didn't think you'd be able to follow a second-person perspective so willingly, this placement of the 'you' instead of the 'I' in narrative. Yet Tambu's story and her mental health struggle is such a universal one, her aspirations at work and in her community so affecting, and the equality she strives for as a woman, as a black woman, is not only universal but so prevalent and necessary in our world today.

Like Dangarembga's debut novel Nervous Conditions, this novel is grounded in womanhood and has quickly risen to the top as your favorite of her works. In this sequel Tambu's British-educated cousin, Nyasha, appears as a changed woman, the way the women we once-admired as girls sometimes do. But a reader doesn't need to have read Nervous Conditions in order to appreciate this book which stands on its own in story, style and grit.

Tsitsi Dangarembga is an admirable author because she dares to be different in prose, style and story. She dares to challenge, alter, and piece together her Zimbabwean character while still being in conversation with world issues involving race and gender. Indeed, "the moon shadows have edges sharp as knives."

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the advice of my friend Gumble's Yard, (whose detailed, in depth reviews make my own redundant - so I should just say, go read his!), I made the decision to read the entire trilogy, of which this is the final - and Booker nominated, culmination. For anyone interested, I would say that is sound, if not indeed indispensable advice - NOT to do so would be like trying to judge The Lord of the Rings by ONLY reading The Return of the King - and the lukewarm to negative reception to the novel I think is indicative of that failing. Several have complained that the final book dragged, but it took me less than 2 days to finish each one - having the first two sections down actually propels the narrative forward a great deal.

I was not QUITE so enamored of this final installment as I was the first two, and almost rated it a 3 or 3.5 - but decided it really does need to be judged as a single work, therefor - a full 4 stars. It is much bleaker, a bit rambling and diffuse, and the character of Tambu undergoes a subtle but somewhat unfortunate transformation in the switch from first to second person narration - which actually serves to distance one from her plight, rather than draw one in.

Initially, I was under the impression that the protagonist was modelled after the author, but this installment makes clear she is closer in alignment to the cousin, Nyasha, who - like the author, goes to Germany and becomes a filmmaker. The author's current political situation (having been arrested in Zimbabwe for protesting against the current regime), will probably guarantee her a spot on the shortlist, but I think the book actually deserves to be there on its own merits ... and as a way for making up for the neglect afforded the previous volumes.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
This is the third part of a trilogy set in Zimbabwe from the late 1960s through to the post-colonial period. This final part is set around the turn of the millennium and follows Tambu into her forties. The narration is in the second person. This can take some adjustment, but “you”, the reader, experience what happens to Tambu and how she behaves in a more direct way.
“You do not shrink back as one mind in your head wishes. Instead you obey the other, push forward.”
There is a tension in the novel between personal and national history. Tambu is haunted by her lack of success, by the racism, the after effects of the struggle for independence, by her own expectations of herself, by gender inequality and her self-loathing. At the beginning of the novel Tambu and sees herself as being hideous. Dangarembga has commented on this:
“She is consumed with self-loathing, and this goes back to, how being black is, if you have not really made that psychological and internal journey, one can still take on all the negativity around blackness from society and internalise it, so in her bid to become educated and shake off everything that she sees as negative and simply disastrous from her life in the village, she has internalised all that, and this is what she sees when she looks into the mirror. She sees a hideous monster that she doesn’t want to have anything to do with. And the whole book really is trying to bring her perception of herself and her actual self together in a healthier manner.”
Dandarembga also examines the tourism industry, especially eco-tourism, in the second half of the book. She illustrates the commodification of lives for the needs of eco-tourism. This is an effective critique of neo-liberal capitalism. Tambu’s behaviour is a defence mechanism and Dangarembga proposes a different type of business approach (unhu/unbuntu), at the end of the novel.
No one who has read the first two novels will be surprised by Tambu’s breakdown and hospitalisation and this is well portrayed, especially as it is juxtaposed with the only really decent job (as a teacher) that she has had. There are ongoing reflections about what the war for independence was fought for from some of the characters:
“Sometimes I ask if people forgot that many people went to war. Because if they have not forgotten, these people in this country, what is going on with them? Why are they so foolish? Do they think we went for this? … This is not what we went for and stayed for without food and blankets, even clothes, without our parents or relatives. Some of us without legs. Yet now we are helpless and there is nothing we can do to remove the things we see that we didn’t go to fight for.”
This trilogy is well worth reading, but do read them in order, it does help and sets the context for the final part. Tambu is a complex and complicated character. She is well educated, but very isolated with few friends and little contact with her family. She isn’t meant to be particularly likeable and she makes poor decisions: all her endeavours turn to dust.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it was the American literary critic Harold Bloom who once stated that the ultimate criterion for great literature was characters evolving throughout the novel, poem, or play: at the end they have to be no longer the same as at the beginning. If that's right, then this novel by the Zimbabwean writer Tsiti Dangarembga (° 1959) is an absolute success.

We get to know main character Tambudzai Sigauke (Tambu) when she is looking for work and permanent shelter in the capital Harare. At this point she already has quite a background: relieved that she was able to escape her rural village through successful studies, she worked for a while in a flashy advertising agency, but left that office after apparent racial and gender-related discrimination; and now she is in a desperate condition while her family back home counts on her support. Her experiences have made Tambu a fragile, very insecure personality, while at the same time still cherishing the ambition to prove herself. Throughout this novel, we will see Tambu's star rising and falling, as a result of both unexpectedly prosperous and predictably dramatic events, eventually ending in a form of resignation.

Dangarembga aptly describes the difficult living and working conditions in Zimbabwe, which still is marked by the war of independence (veterans play a rather nasty role in this novel), by remnants of the colonial regime (in practice whites remain in the lead), and due to the rotting corruption of the current regime ('the old crocodile' is mentioned once, needless to say who this refers to). But above all, this novel shows how a fragile personality can be crushed by a particular culture, such as the ubiquitous macho-sexism, by structures that aim for cheap money, and by old family traditions that impose obligations, etc. It is one of the great achievements of this novel that it offers a complex cocktail of these elements, within many intermingling layers.

It’s the prudent resilience of Tambu that makes this novel stand out: she constantly ends up into trouble, regularly collapses under the pressure, but she also manages to surpass this, or at least adapt to her difficulties. It's a great example of female empowerment. And the great merit of Dangaremgba is that she did not turn this into a cheap feel-good story (along the lines of for instance The Color Purple): even in the end, Tambu remains vulnerable and insecure, albeit to some extent purified.

From a literary point of view, this novel is a bit precarious: there’s a succession of brilliant and slightly dragging passages, and especially at the end the story unwinds a bit too quickly. But it's mainly through the narrative point of view, - the author constantly addressing Tambu in the you-form (very unusual in literature) -, that Dangarembga succeeds in arousing our involvement as a reader and our sympathy with the fragile Tambu. I think this novel was rightly placed on the Short List of the Booker Prize.

[Jonathan Pool · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overview

This is a book of big themes. Implicit is a significant degree of criticism of the prevailing structure of society in Zimbabwe at the start of the twenty first century, and particularly with respect to the condition of women and the continuance of a patriarchy which the author critiques, not least given the real dangers being experienced by the female population.
It’s not an easy book to succinctly summarise, and that’s reflected in numerous reviews giving some very different interpretations of its meaning(s). That’s a good thing I believe and encourages debate and discussion- the authors intent.
Dangarembga writes obliquely at times, and the narrative structure, is more a series of individual set pieces, featuring a number of characters who flit in and then out of the book, as distinct from a story based narrative with plot.
The obliqueness is not surprising. Zimbabwe is a country whose last one hundred years history has been one of extraordinary turmoil, and it’s no coincidence that Dangarembga was arrested one week after her nomination for the Booker prize for literature 2020. The arrest was in the Borrowdale suburb of Harare, a location which kicks off This Mournable Body.
Dangarembga is relatively little known outside her native Zimbabwe, despite the fact that her first novel Nervous Conditions , published in 1985 was named by the BBC in 2018 as one of the top 100 books that have shaped the world. Margaret Busby, chairwoman of the 2020 Booker judges has previously championed Dangarembga’s work.
The primary character in the book (and series) is Maiguru Tambudzai Sigauke (Tambu). Tambu is a character whose persona notably shifts as the book progresses. She is both indicative of a malaise, and an exhaustion that affects twenty-first century Zimbabwe, and she is also a pointer to the future as Dangarembga equips her lead character with a fundamentally changed outlook by the book’s end. The reader’s perspective on the eventual metamorphosis of Tambu is cleverly done via a second person perspective (the pronoun “you”) as the reader is looking over the shoulder of Tambu. Zimbabwe though, despite some green shoots, has a long way to go to shed the ingrained and acquired inequalities of centuries.
It is noticeable that Dangarembga does not give precise details of the time period in question, and/or Tambu’s age. I think this is notionally set sometime around 2005- 2010; the publication date was 2018. The one definitive clue is a reference near the end of the book to “The Old Fossil”." They’ve invaded lots more places. Because the Old Fossil ordered it" (325). The fast track land reform programme first started in 2000. Just as last year’s Booker longlisted author, Elif Shafak, has to be very careful about the reception of her novels by the authorities in Turkey, I can only guess that the eventual departure (sidelining) of Robert Mugabe in 2017, was an encouragement to get this book published. It is noticeable that This Mournable Body avoids overtly addressing the three distinct governments of the last one hundred years. The Marilou Hills and the Karina hydroelectricity plant are given the eponymn of Rhodes and Smith respectively (page 277). Mugabe as above , and once more for a road carrying his name. It’s interesting that Tambu says: “I don’t believe in politics” (234)

The story

The book is divided into three separate parts. “Ebbing”, “Suspended” and “Arriving”. Somewhat disconcertingly for the reader who feels that Tambu should be a point of hopeful reference, she is instead a woman whose resolve and sense of direction is certainly ebbing away, and her decline does result in an outcome when she reaches rock bottom, and to a large extent her life is suspended. To what extent is this decline, manifest in bad behaviour, brought on herself, and deserved? Should the reader feel any degree of sympathy for her plight; is there any sense in which she is a victim of circumstances beyond her control? It’s a fascinating profile, and there’s complexity in her character and in Dangarembga’s writing. It’s tempting to regard Tambu as a facsimile at the personal level, of a country whose structural problems are driving it to eventual breakdown. Tambu is variously a thief (of her landlady’s vegetables); a liar (after a conversation with a fellow bus passenger “You are relived to inject a fact into the nonsense you are dishing out” (17); an offensive drunk (in a nightclub); she’s avaricious, as she deludedly targets men for marriage, and the supposed assets they possess. In a mob (at Borrowdale, where Dangarembga was arrested on July 31st), Tambu is no friend of the victim , and more likely perpetrator of violence; Tambu subsequently does lash out and in unforgivable circumstances.
Tambu’s journey means that she is literally on the move, and changes her lodgings in quick succession, four times. Each new accommodation brings with it the introduction to characters whose outlook provides the frame for Dangarembga’s observations on people’s lives. One difficulty for writer with a series of linked books (this is the third part of a trilogy) is to what degree the reader need to start at the beginning. I thought Dangarembga’s references to Tambu’s extended family members gave the necessary background to her life as a child and young woman (i.e before This Mournable Body starts) while avoiding too much recap (the issue I had with fellow Booker 2020 nominee The Mirror and the Light and the countless dream flashbacks). It would be interesting to read the first two parts of the trilogy, and it might reveal further depths to This Mournable Body, but as a stand alone, this third part works very well.
There is the basis of a plot in the third part of the book as Tracey Stevenson “celebrating roots” (!) sets up a business, Green Jacaranda, focused on foreign tourists. This is the easiest part of the book to follow but felt slightly out of place to me.
Tambu’s downward spiral is arrested, and at the very end of the book she is humbled and “arriving” at a proper realisation (courtesy of Christine). She has a position as “office orderly”. She sweeps the floor and makes the tea for her colleagues. The arrogance has gone, the search for short cuts has stopped. “this is a small first step towards maintaining your knowledge”

Themes

If Tambu is Dangarembga’s Zimbabwe microcosm - what the nation needs to aspire to on a personal level - the macro considerations are potentially more entrenched and much more difficult to change from within. There is some evidence of change, but the book is dominated by actions and opinions that shock.

Teju Cole and the book title

I think a book’s title is important and sometimes deeply meaningful “This Mournable Body” is an obscure and intriguing title. Dangarembga refers to Teju Cole’s essay in 2015 in The New Yorker following the bombings of the publishers Charlie Hebro, in Paris. This essay is titled “Unmournable Bodies”. (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cul...).

Inter alia the essay seems to say that mourning the dead carries with it a selective view of who or what it is acceptable to mourn. Dangarembga is quoted in interviews on what she took from the essay :
“Teju Cole asks us why we mourn the death of some bodies but not the death of other bodies. I extrapolated that question to living bodies. Basically I asked the question whether, if we could mourn the circumstance of certain living bodies we might not create a better world. At the same time those living bodies also need to mourn themselves in order to begin to heal and move forward…my observation has been that women often find it difficult to mourn themselves and their circumstances. In Zimbabwe today a lot of women think they are born to put up with all sorts of abuse, beginning in the families they are born into and equally in the families they marry into. It is the idea that society foists on women that suffering is a woman’s lot. It’s beginning to change, but we still have a long way to go. Such women do not know how to mourn their circumstances. It’s a question of being allowed to grieve for yourself. One has to see oneself as worthy to be able to grieve about the negative things that happen to one.
Grieving and mourning are active. You feel and you wade through the feelings. With depression one does not wade through but more or less drowns. Grieving and mourning, because they are active, pull one through, in spite of being terribly difficult. This, I think, is true whether one is grieving or mourning for oneself, or for someone else. I think that many Zimbabweans have not begun to mourn their situation actively yet. They are still denying it so as not to feel the pain”

My conclusion from the essay (and from Dangarembga’s comments) is that This Mournable Body is a feminist story, and furthermore one in which women need to be empowered in themselves, to change mentality, in order to be actively involved in bringing about societal change. A recurring part of Tambu’s life (which calms as the book continues) is a fight with her own depression (manifest in snakes, hyenas and ants). A myriad of experiences have created this broken and ineffectual woman. At the book’s end, aunt Lucia is increasingly influential as guide and teacher, and reinforces the positive aspects of Ubuntu. (Relationships sustained through reciprocity, participation, harmony and hospitality) In Shona this is Unhu “she (Lucia) delivers several lectures concerning the unhu”. (362) At last Tambu is a willing and receptive listener. The book opens with a quotation from Lorraine Hansberry: “There is always something left to love”. Tambu is not beyond redemption.

Zimbabwean patriarchal attitudes stink

Dangarembga briefly introduces a married couple Mai Taka, and husband, Silence:
o Silence walks out, taking their young son. (Taka’s “crime” is to go to the cinema without his approval.) Mai Taka can’t go back to him, and as a result is resigned to the fact that her son is lost to her: “A child, when the father is known, belongs to the paternal family” (211) (The Shona tradition of roora is still entrenched)
o Silence subsequently assaults Mai Takao using a bicycle chain (222). She is pregnant and aborts the foetus. Despite the horrendous actions no neighbours are willing to take her to the Charitable Mission Hospital
o A separate character (Shine) makes a brief appearance: Shine rapes a female lodger in the room next to his. The response of another female flatmate: ”Only that? Then why are you crying? He didn’t threaten you? He didn’t say he will find you again? If you ask all women at your workplace, in fact all women, then you will know it’s what nearly every one of them puts up with” (68)

o Tambu’s own family members experience ongoing brutality. Her mother bashed by her husband, drunk, as he returns home. “he is killing me, he is killing me” (314)

Female despair and capitulation

Tambu’s attitude is a personal odyssey that goes from surrender to some enlightenment

o Tambu on the sight of tears shed for a young child beaten by a teacher at school: “a nauseating act of ghastly femininity. You have no desire to expend energy for a minor matter of corporal punishment” (215)

o Tambu on Christine “with her fruitless war that brought nothing but false hope and a fresh, more complete variety of discouragement” (85/6)

o Nyasha’s women’s workshops: “The task I gave the girls was to research a great African woman”. Seventeen of my participants wrote only about themselves” (189)

then,
o Tambu reflecting on anti anti European sentiment. “ The notion of one group of people disparaging another so malignantly once more dismays you” (104)
Zimbabwean females and signs of life
o Tambu meets Christine for the first time “A woman who is good at what she does. And that is intriguing” (72)
o Mai Moetsabi, the Queen of Africa Boutique. An inspirational woman and entrepreneur who works hard (first to arrive) despite local agitators working against her
o Tambu recruits her mother (not father) for eco village. Mai Samhungu, chairwoman of the Womens Club is the driving force for the village

This is a book which argues the case for essential female rights and dignity. The legacy of Cecil Rhodes and the British; of Ian Smith’s brand of de facto apartheid, of Mugabe’s rule from 1980-2017: all feed into the shameful conditions of the womenfolk, but the underlying assumptions of male domination have been a constant.

At the end of This Mournable Body Tambu’s renaissance gives cause for hope. Tsitsi Dangarembga’s own life bears some comparison with Tambu (amalgamated with cousin, Nyasha). The fact that Dangarembga is actively on the streets pushing for reform under a (relatively) new government indicates that it will not be plain sailing. Getting publicity or distribution for This Mournable Body when it was first published in 2018 has been difficult. The attention garnered by the Booker Prize publicity will hopefully be helpful, though to what extent the book will be widely distributed to those who need it most, the women in Zimbabwe, remains uncertain.

[Katerina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Молодая была не молода, или Героиню за тридцать выселяют из молодежного хостела. Она вынуждена искать себе жилье и работу; за неимением ничего лучшего оказывается в учителем биологии в школе (стоит ли говорить, что ее специализация отнюдь не биология), а оттуда прямая дорога в психбольницу, муахаха, скоро первое сентября, дорогие коллеги!

Роман нормальный, в нем очень хорошая финальная сцена, но наверное, общий смысл этой номинации в том, чтобы широкая общественность прочитала два других романа этой писательницы, которые рассказывают историю нашей героини во время становления отдельного государства Зимбабве и уже стали классикой на родине. Лично я так и собираюсь сделать, благо написаны они как раз по-английски, а что еще вы знаете про Зимбабве, кроме его столицы из школьных уроков географии.

[John Banks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tsitsi Dangarembga's This Mournable Body, longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize is a difficult book for me to review. It is the third in a trilogy (the much acclaimed Nervous Conditions published some 30 years back and The Book of Not) and my sense as I read this is that the earlier books significantly frame and perhaps explain the central character's response and reaction to many central incidents. I feel like I'm reading around an absence or something missing that the central character, Tsmbudzai, a middle aged Zimbabwean woman, is avoiding. It is this sense of oblique avoidance that in many ways propels the narrative and perhaps also offers an interesting political-social critique of post-colonial, post-independence Zimbabwe. I think in a meta sense it is also offering a critical response to expectations of postcolonial novels as well. The problem for me is that I haven't as yet read the two earlier books.

"The landlady is still for a moment, like a woman who has departed to sit beside her sibling. Her words open up a void, out of which troop your own wounded and dead. You regard your memories from afar, and finally turn away from them".

There is a lot of turning away from in this book and that might make it fruatrating, the obliqueness of it all, for some.

"Starting out on your road to permanent recovery, this is something you will first have to live down and then deal with. How your cousin, who identified herself when she first came to visit at the hospital by the affectionate radiance that you remember her for, could show such poor judgment is perfectly baffling. You want one or the other, a powerful radiance or obvious failure, not this liminal complexity"

I love the unexpected irony in this passage, almost laser like as it is directed at the reader: "You want one or the other, a powerful radiance or obvious failure, not this liminal complexity" Perhaps asking and challenging us about our readerly expectations for and of a character like Tsmbudzai, and refusing us any easy access to her or defining her.

This Mournable Body follows Tsmbudzai through her daily life from a fascinating and unusual second person "You" perspective. I get the sense it is occuring around 2000. She is very much down on her luck after leaving a job as a copy editor with an advertising firm due to her sense that white employees are unfairly taking credit for her work. The book opens with a section that culminates in a deeply uncomfrotable violent incident. Tsmbudzai then finds her way to a position as a school teacher and then yet another violent outburst finds her dismissed from that role. As the novel progresses she is not a very likable character, portrayed as out for her own advantage, almost no matter the cost to others, as she seeks to find a way of improiving her lot in Harare. But as you would expect from a skillful novelist, this is far from the full story or version of Tsmbudzai (and through her of Zimbabwae over the past few decades). Through the various incidents that play out around and are instigated by Tsmbudzai, there is a sense that she almost avoids, even erases, what is occurring. She cannot confront perhaps a past that is driving and fueling her reactions and actions. So instead she displaces through an almost frantic effort to climb the ladder of Harare career and business opportunity. The novel's title and reference to Teju Cole's 2015 essay, "Unmournable Bodies" certainly sets up this theme of avoidance and silencing of a need to mourn.

This novel powerfully represents the costs of such an avoidance. I think the "You" narration is at the heart of this, as it's distanced, accusatory and harsh. The narrative voice creates a distance or gap between the reader and the central character. She is very difficult to identify with and this because I think she is struggling to identify with her self. The "you" then is her, and her discomfort at having to confront constantly an almost impossible identity. She is deeply uncomfortable in her selves. It functions as a kind of self recrimination. But perhaps it also works as a collective "you", including possibly directed at the white, western gaze that might be tempted to judge this struggling woman for not being the expected, positive role model as a post-colonial black women. It is refusing us that. The burden of all this means that it almost has to be oblique, filterered through third-person and at times fades away in the midst of very confronting episodes. Much of this also has to do with the gendered "You" dealing with deeply ingrained mysogyny and tolerated violence inflicted on women. There is definitely a sense too that this is exacerbated by the costs of the brutal struggles and war for independence. I do acknowledge though this is my reading as a white westerner and not necessarily the mode of address that the author intends.

This "You"potentially also interestingly displaces the "I" of much recent Western autofiction and therefore gives a particular kind of response to Tesju Cole's "Unmournable Bodies". She is refusing to respond with that whole authentic "I". She is obliquely refusing perhaps the autofictional I for example of Cole's Open City. This is just an idea, a possible reading I'm exploring.

[Spoiler Warning]: The episode in the book's conclusion as Tambudzai endeavours to extend her boss's (Tracey Stevenson) 'cultural tourism' business to her home village by involving her mother, Mai, is telling here. We as readers I think are positioned, often uncomfortably, as cultural tourists, as Tambudzai works to present for us (and more interestingly to avoid) the authentic, post-colonial Zimbabwean experience. To ensure we are safe and comfortable as she does for the tourist customers of Green Jacaranda. Where it ends with the village woman expected to 'dance naked' for the tourist gaze is deeply unsettling. The various breakdowns in the narrative as it were, including the obliqueness of the narrative voice, is refusing this, refusing to perform a certain kind of 'naked, authentic' identity for the narrative camera of readers as cultural tourists by throwing our cameras into the tree as it were.

However, without having read the first two novels I'm finding it difficult to position and respond to this "You" voice. It is fascinating and at times disconcerting. But how reliable is it? What else might the earlier two books reveal about this character that may provide a different perspective on the constant oblique avoidances that more than anything for me define this book's voice.

A worthy read providing me with a lot to think about. I will definitely get to the first two books, hopefully in the near future, and then perhaps reassess this review.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Totally middle of the road. The trip is sometimes quite interesting but definitely requires forbearance. Expect potholes, road kill, and long stretches of dull scenery.

My greatest criticism is that the protagonist, Tambudzai Sigauke, reads as a middle-aged woman; one deficient in self-knowledge and lacking motivation. It was a shock to reach the end and discover that she was intended to be young.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't stop thinking about this trilogy and all that it depicts, wondering how to even write about it.

On the surface it's the story of Tambu, a girl from a Zimbabwean village, her coming of age and entry into adulthood and how all of that is affected by her encounters with the outside world, firstly through her cousin and Uncle who went to England, who on their return possessed something Tambu wished to aspire to, and knew she could only get through a certain type of education - and underneath it's about the mutation of an individual and a society.

That is the beginning of her losing something of herself, in the same way that every country that was ever colonised began a similar descent when their colonisers arrived.

Tambu is diligent and focused, on becoming something that "others" approve of and pursues it relentlessly.

In This Mournable Body, she is at a low point, she has left a job at an ad agency on a principle, one she has never uttered, nor been supported in, wrongs happen in silence, rights are not up for discussion.

She moves to the widow's home and ponders another route while helping herself to the vegetable garden, she imagines seducing one of the sons, though never acts on it. Homemaking isn't one of her aspirations. She returns to teaching, we know intimately of her experience as a pupil, what she encounters are wholly different children, the "born-frees".

Tambu has always adapted to fit in and tried to excel to overcome obstacles, in the classroom signs of mental unease appear, she reaches breaking point. And tips over.

Returning to her cousins home, she is further disillusioned, unwilling to accept her reality, her aspirations still carry foreign expectations.

It's a life of pursuit and escape as each new venture brushes up against values and principles she doesn't think or speak of, that force her to act when she realises she is compromising who she is. Denial battles with mental stability.

When the ants appear it's time to pay attention.

In a recent interview NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer asked about the message Tsitsi Dangarembga is giving to young Zimbabweans, given the despair of her anti-hero Tambu, in a week where the author was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and arrested for a peaceful protest against government corruption:

"What happens is up to us because Tambudzai - all she's concerned with is getting ahead in her own life. I show that that kind of attitude may lead to a person getting what they want for some time. But in the end, the repercussions of that kind of behaviour are going to be felt by everybody...because since the economy is so difficult, people think, I just have to put my head down and do what's best for me. But that doesn't solve the community - and - national - level issues that we have to engage with."

Highly Recommended.

My complete review, including extracts from the live London Review Bookshop, interview of Tsitsi Dangarembga by Sara Collins here at Word by Word.

[Anita Pomerantz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has so much unrealized potential, but unfortunately falls way short of what I expect in a good novel. The themes are interesting. Tambu was very successful academically in her youth through hard work, but in the real world, she seems unable to grab a foothold on the ladder of success. She is wildly jealous of those who have been able to amass anything approaching material success. In Zimbabwe, the poverty, the lack of respect for women, the corruption, the unenforceable property rights all make it hard for a woman to make her way in the world, and all of this is elucidated during the course of the story.

Unfortunately, it is told in a way that is so boring and unnecessarily obtuse. I did not read the two prior books in the trilogy, and I do think that might have made a big difference because perhaps I would have had passing familiarity with the characters beyond the protagonist. But since I didn’t, they all just seemed like a stream of names. Some of them had multiple names and were referred to differently from time to time. Others were referred to as her mother’s uncle’s sister’s son (okay, not really, but that represents how confusing it all was in terms of who was related to whom and how they were interrelated). If I have to spend this much time just figuring out what is going on, it is very, very hard to get lost in the storytelling.

Many people will dislike the fact that the book is written in the second person POV, but I actually liked that element and thought it was well done. It’s almost like we were inside Tambu’s mind as she scolds herself for her many failures. In addition, there were actually some descriptive passages that were beautifully written, but sadly there weren’t many of them. I wanted to see more of that author and less of the one struggling to move her character to the finish line.

Bottom line, this book didn’t get interesting until the last 20% when I finally understood where the author was going and why. The first 80% is such a slog that honestly in no way was the journey made worthwhile by the payoff.

Writing quality: 3/5
Originality: 4/5
Character development: 2/4
Plot development: 1/4
Overall enjoyment: 0/2
Total: 10/20

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

My opinion improved slightly. The climatic scene at the end finally engaged me, really delving into the rural/urban divide in Zimbabwe i was hoping to get more of. I think i would have gotten more out of this had i read the first two books of this story. Also, the use of second person just does not work, at all.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I suffered through the first two shitty novels in this trilogy so as to be all set to sink into this, the third one. Only to bail on it just short of the 50% mark. What a monumental waste of valuable reading time. If you want to read shapely, powerful fiction from this part of the world, go directly to NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and spare yourself the agony I just subjected myself to.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now you understand. You arrived on the back of a hyena. The treacherous creature dropped you from afar onto a desert floor. There is nothing here except, at the floor’s limits, infinite walls. You are an ill-made person. You are being unmade. The hyena laugh-howls at your destruction. It screams like a demented spirit and the floor dissolves beneath you.

This Mournable Body is, as I have learned, the third volume in a trilogy (following Nervous Conditions and The Book of Not) by Tsitsi Dangarembga, and I have come to it as a standalone after it was shortlisted for the 2020 Man Booker Prize. That has made for a challenging reading experience. All three volumes follow the life of Tambudzai (“Tambu”) as she comes of age against the backdrop of Zimbabwe’s War of Liberation. The first two volumes cover Tambu’s education and early working life, and as This Mournable Body begins, she is approaching middle age, unemployed, unmarried, living illegally in a youth hostel, and without knowing that in the previous novels Tambu was presented as clever, ambitious, and driven, she comes across now as listless, disengaged, and fairly unlikeable; she has nothing but she’s not working towards anything. As the novel progresses and Tambu acts like the world owes her more than she has, I couldn't tell if her memories of being an excellent (if unrecognised) student and an award-winning (if uncredited) copywriter were a matter of Tambu being an unreliable narrator or if she was dropping hints as to what made her the kind of hopeless woman we see today. The language is tricky (many passages needed more than one read, not to mention the second person POV), the plotting elliptical, Tambu’s mind unknowable, but by the time I got to the end of this, I felt some important truths had been slowly revealed to me; truths about what it was to be a woman in the 90’s in this post-colonial, patriarchal, unstable country. I would gladly go back and read the first two volumes in this trilogy, but I’m not unhappy about the added interest that the uncertainty around Tambu’s past provided here as a standalone, standout, read.

When you are several steps away they turn to each other. They suck air in through their teeth in harsh hisses. Five. This is your thought. Against a market. Five. Against a city, a nation. A planet. Women. Five. What do they think they can achieve? They can hiss as much as they wish.

Dangarembga took the title for this novel from the article Unmournable Bodies, written by Teju Cole in The New Yorker in the wake of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre and concerning which victims of violence we in the West deem most “mournable”. (In reference to the connection, Dangarembga has said, “Basically I asked the question whether, if we could mourn the circumstance of certain living bodies we might not create a better world. At the same time those living bodies also need to mourn themselves in order to begin to heal and move forward.”) A series of big events happen in Tambu’s life in This Mournable Body, and while I didn’t always understand her actions (or inactions), I eventually realised that as a woman (and, oh, how the women are abused in this book) and as a Black Zimbabwean (living still in the shadow of her more powerful white neighbours), she was suffering a form of PTSD from living through the war; and while she may not have been a combatant (as many of the other women in the novel were), hers was a body deserving of mourning; from herself as much as from those around her. This was an incredibly interesting narrative, even if I had to sometimes work to find the meaning, and ultimately, I thought the whole story ended perfectly.

She says your education is not only in your heart anymore: like hers, now your knowledge is now also in your body, every bit of it, including your heart.

I hope I do remember to go back and read the rest of this trilogy (so many books, so little time); Tambudzai is an incredible character, and an incredible lens through which to study this time period in Zimbabwe’s history, and I would love to meet her back when things were looking so bright. I would not have been unhappy had this won the Booker.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A punch in the arm, a jolt to the body while you sit in your comfy reading chair that says, “Listen. Listen to the plight of Zimbabwean women.” The novel has many other messages, but the misogyny in Zimbabwe came through loud and clear.

Tambudzai is not a particularly likeable main character. At the beginning of the story, she lives in a youth hostel. She prepares for one of many job interviews. She’s too old to live in the hostel and must move out. She has a college degree, is unemployed, and unmarried. She left a good job for reasons unknown. Tambu is practically destitute. It’s important to find a job and there is immediate pressure to move out of the hostel. After her first job interview is a non-starter, she lies to the combi (minibus) driver about having a job, one of many lies she will tell throughout the novel.

In the second scene, she witnesses her beautiful but scantily-clad hostel-mate Gertrude being sexually harassed by a mob as she tries to ascend the steps of a combi (minibus). A man rips Gertrude’s skirt off. Another throws her to the ground. Tambudzai taunts Gertrude with vulgar insults along with the crowd. Even picks up a stone to throw. Until another combi driver intervenes. And then Gertrude recognizes Tambu and asks for help. Help Tambudzai doesn’t give. Apparently, it’s not safe to be a beautiful single woman in fashionable clothing in Zimbabwe. Both men and women are against it, as is Tambudzai.

Scanning the newspaper, Tambu sees an ad for an available room in a house but for a man. She calls anyway. The old woman likes her voice and sets up an interview. The woman is a widow living in a filthy, deteriorating mansion with three other tenants. Tambudzai lies about having a job. The widow speaks glowingly of her successful husband, a set-up by Dangarembga about why trusting white people in business matters will render one soulless.

The widow likes Tambudzai and offers her a room, which makes Tambu suspicious. “You are growing suspicious about being liked by this woman, knowing there is nothing about yourself that counts as amiable. Contempt for everything floods you.” Tambu moves in and despises the place. She’s overcome with guilt that with her education, she’s done nothing with her life and is worse off than her poverty-stricken mother who must look after her sister who lost a leg in the war. She thinks about suicide. She devises little plots to steal one of the widow’s sons from his wife. She doesn’t follow through.

One of the widow’s daughters, Christine moves in, bringing Tambu mealie from her mother. But Tambu never takes it. Christine knows Tambu’s family because of the war. Christine will be a strong influence on Tambu about remaining true to her Zimbabwean identity, to her family, a message that Tambudzai has great difficulty hearing.

After many false starts, Tambudzai may have found the success she yearns for. But if may be the kind of success the widow’s husband had. The kind of success Christine abhors. Will she sacrifice her Zimbabwean identity and her family for money?

Dangarembga explores the meaning of success for a black woman educated by the British, casting about for her identity in post-colonial Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia), cultural misogyny, feminism, remaining cultural hierarchies between blacks and whites after Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain, and mother-daughter relationships. She does it in lyrical prose, using many similes and metaphors, that take some time to adjust to. She uses the omniscient point of view which is off-putting, but she makes it work. Her narrative is unusual, maybe with a slight British manner of writing. In any case, it’s worth the adjustment to hear this compelling and enlightening story.

[Eric Anderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I was at university I read Tsitsi Dangarembga’s highly acclaimed 1988 novel “Nervous Conditions”. Earlier this year, the BBC named this novel as one of the top 100 books that shaped the world and it’s claimed that this was the first book published by a black woman from Zimbabwe in English. The story focuses on the story of Tambu who is a young woman who strives to obtain an education in her post-Rhodesian society. The book explores some of the conflicts she encounters including gender inequality and racism in the educational system which is still influenced by colonialism. The author has continued to write about her character Tambu’s struggles in society in two further novels “The Book of Not” which was published in 2006 and “This Mournable Body” which was published this year. That means this trilogy has been thirty years in the making! I find it fascinating how Dangarembga has spent so long living with this character, especially since the most autobiographical character in this trilogy isn’t Tambu but her cousin Nyasha whose educational background and work most closely resembles Dangarembga’s. I think the long gestation of this trilogy’s creation works to both its fault and benefit.

“This Mournable Body” takes its title from an article by Teju Cole called ‘Unmournable Bodies’ which poignantly addresses the issue of free speech and how public opinion in Western countries often chooses not to recognize the victims who speak out against their own state’s power. The novel begins with Tambu living in a precarious state of being. She’s unemployed and seeking accommodation somewhere other than the hostel which she is technically too old to still inhabit. Dangarembga narrates her account in the second person, but it remains closely aligned to Tambu’s point of view so it’s as if Tambu is viewing herself from the outside and also highly conscious that she is being scrutinized by those around her. While this style of narrative offers opportunities to uniquely examine a kind of self-consciousness in a character, I felt the novel largely failed to take advantage of opportunities to explore this complexity. Throughout the novel Tambu is primarily a very passive character observing those around her. We’re introduced to different characters and situations before quickly moving on from them. So the story touches on subjects such as misogynistic violence against women, a failing education system, mental healthcare and the continued exploitation of Zimbabwe’s black working class by Westerners. However, I found it frustrating that the novel doesn’t dramatize these issues very effectively in the story because of the style of narration. Since Tambu doesn’t actually have much contact with people there’s little sense of the distinction between how she feels about herself and how people around Tambu are perceiving her.

Read my full review of This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga on LonesomeReader

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This isn't an easy book - it's written in the second person, and it's immersed in the history, language, culture and rhythms of Zimbabwe in the late 90s, and it changes in tone frequently from satirical to searing to sad. That said, it was precisely this difference - really, this book is completely different than anything else I have ever read - that led me to give it five stars.

Dangarembga writes about Tambudzai, a woman of indeterminate age (no longer very young but not very old either, it seems), deeply affected by her education and upbringing during Rhodesia's racist last days, and the ensuing civil and regional conflicts, trying to emulate a white version of success (but also just stay afloat in a crumbling Zimbabwe), while she struggles with depression. Along the way, there's many many fascinating sharply (and satirically) drawn characters and vignettes. The send up of "eco tourism" is very funny, indeed.

Sometimes I had a hard time knowing exactly what was going on. Dangaremba's writing varies from the allusive to the very concrete, and there's also lots of Zimbabwean references that I just didn't get. But I found that concentration and persistence really paid off, and I found myself rooting quite hard for Tambudzai, even when everyone around her (and her own worst instincts) are laboring against her.

Overall, a deep dive into a world that was very new to me - with my only superficial knowledge of recent Zimbabwean history and even less knowledge of their literature. A talented writer throwing a lot out there - sometimes it almost feels like too much - telling a compelling story that is by turns richly funny and painful. I will go back and read Dangaremba's earlier books.

[Emmeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Like many others, I came to this as it was longlisted for the Booker prize, and came without much backstory, without much knowledge of Zimbabwe and without having read the two novels that are considered loose prequels.

All that considered, I found it quite a successful reading experience.

Tambudzai, a character who is difficult to like but easy to empathize with, is in desperate straights as she approaches middle age. Overeducated for life in the village she left many years before, she is unemployed, and unemployable compared to the confident new generation raised in a free Zimbabwe. She lives in a youth hostel that continually reminds her she’s too old to live there, and ekes out her meagre savings in increasing panic. She manages to get various jobs, but there is always something deeply problematic about them, and increasingly, about her. At one point she has a nervous breakdown.

The writing style is oblique but interesting, and the protagonist is bravely, unarguably unlikable, but also relatable. How many of us have felt like we’re just hanging on at some point in the last decade? Tambudzai’s anxiety at her lack of a real safety net was palpable.

This was a depressing book, and at many points seemed to be going from bad to worse, but it ended rather better than I expected. I can’t shake the feeling I would have gotten much more out of it with more knowledge of the country and the historical circumstances (I’m unsure of when it’s set, even) but there was also a universality to the circle of corporate values, low-level exploitation and minor betrayals that entraps the protagonist that I think makes it very readable the world over.

[Daniel Chaikin · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Litsy review says a lot in small amount of space:

"This an uncomfortable book. After building up our hero, Tambu, in two terrific novels, Dangarembga essentially tosses that away. Zimbabwe is not such an easily wrapped place and her previous construct is here, maybe intentionally, undermined. This is not a Tambu you‘re going to like, nor will you like seeing her struggles from inside your own head in a 2nd person narrative. I‘m partially horrified and partially impressed. A difficult read."

This novel follows Tambu again, continuing from the previous novels but into a very different Zimbabwe. The first two books took place in the 1960's and 1970's, during the "War". (The Rhodesian Bush War—also called the Second Chimurenga as well as the Zimbabwe War of Liberation, 1965-1979). I don't think we are ever given a date for the time period covered here, but at one point a 2002 movie is mentioned, and we have email but not smart phones. This Zimbabwe is peaceful, somewhat prosperous, and has a flourishing tourist industry. It also has its tensions: an accepted but corrupt government, a kind of tense cooperation between the mostly wealthy whites and the rest of the population, and, notably, a significant set of psychologically scarred veteran freedom fighters who tend to be discouraged with the results of their victory. Thematically this builds on the last chapters of The Book of Not where Dangarembga began to explore the dangers of the post-war urban capitalisms and its underlying emptiness. There it almost felt like an add on. But here Tambu's struggles within this environment are the main plot.

I'm really glad I read the first two books before this (Nervous Conditions and The Book of Not). They aren't essential plot-wise, but they provide a context, and a background for Tambu, adding a kind of resonating shock value here. Also the first two books are really rewarding, and, unlike this one, are easy on the reader.

-----------------------------------------------

33. This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga
published: 2018
format: 280-page paperback
acquired: June
read: Jul 12-19
time reading: 10:01, 2.1 mpp
rating: 4
locations: Zimbabwe
about the author: born 1959 in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I had time to read the first two books in this trilogy. It is my understanding that the first two are in first person but this one morphs into a sometimes second person, on purpose because the author was trying to let the reader and herself have some space from the material. I think the context of the first two would have aided my understanding of the family and town dynamics but I was pretty much there by the end. If the judges for the Booker Prize were aware of the previous two novels, it's not like they could strip their brains of that context. Sadly without it, I think the first part of this novel in particular is difficult to make sense of.

The title comes from a Teju Cole essay, Unmournable Bodies, that also helps out the novel in context - how many countries in Africa do I not even know the most recent news stories? I may know a bit more about Zimbabwe but only really from the 1960s and not much about what came after, and mostly from colonial perspectives. How hard it is to establish new industry, new systems, when the people needed to invest also lack any understanding. How hard it is to be a single woman in her 40s, between jobs with no safety net.

I think the ending, which confronts a number of timely issues, really redeemed this novel for me but I must admit to struggling through it a bit otherwise. I may not have finished it so soon were it not unrenewable at the library!

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

I last read Dangarembga back in 2009 when I was trying out the 1001 Books Before you Die challenge (the least said about that, the better) it was her first book Nervous Conditions, which introduced the character of Tambu and I didn’t mind that.

This Mournable Body is the third part of the series and it is by far one of the worst books I’ve read in a long time.

I hated everything , the writing style, the characters, the plot. I wavered between boredom and frustration.

Yes the plot is touches upon topics which are relevant; abuse, suffering and bits of magical realism. I also saw it as a commentary of modern day Zimbabwe and it’s shifting ‘tourist friendly’ culture.

Reading the novel was a chore though. An unpleasant experience. I know this is my opinion and it’s definitely me not the book.