What do you think?
Rate this book
Nervous Conditions and Related Readings
New Hardcover ~ Cover and pages in perfect condition ~ ships 7 days a week from NH, USA **(holiday's excluded)**
57 pages, Paperback
First published September 9, 1996
3 people are currently reading
200 people want to read
About the author
Tsitsi Dangarembga
12 books1,043 followersSpent 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.
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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 31, 2023
This was honestly a great novel. Contained so much more than I expected for a relatively quick read. Intense and rather beautiful.
January 21, 2021
It's rather incredible how big a punch a novel of under-300 pages can pack when written like Nervous Conditions. An acerbic commentary on feminism, post-colonialism and coming of age in the Zimbabwe of the late 1960s and early 1970s (at the time, the country was still a British possession called Southern Rhodesia), the story feels like it can still apply today in many parts of the globe, including Africa. This text should be required reading in any world literature course.
The edition I read included supplemental material meant to reveal the influence, and similarity, that connects author Dangarembga to writers in other countries. Out of the small assembly of poems, essays, memoir excerpts and even a speech, I enjoyed Doris Lessing's short story "The Old Chief Mshlanga" the most. This is not surprising, since Lessing shared a Zimbabwean background with Dangarembga, albeit from a white, and arguably more privileged, woman perspective.
The edition I read included supplemental material meant to reveal the influence, and similarity, that connects author Dangarembga to writers in other countries. Out of the small assembly of poems, essays, memoir excerpts and even a speech, I enjoyed Doris Lessing's short story "The Old Chief Mshlanga" the most. This is not surprising, since Lessing shared a Zimbabwean background with Dangarembga, albeit from a white, and arguably more privileged, woman perspective.
November 30, 2017
An excellent book. I read it while on vacation in Africa and found it to be a great way to begin understanding much of what I saw and heard. Themes of gender inequality, colonialism and the bond of tradition are explored in a coming-of-age story.
It is written in the first person which helps us to fell the same sense of reflection experienced by the author and protagonist.
The plot is straight forward but touches all the main points.
It is written in the first person which helps us to fell the same sense of reflection experienced by the author and protagonist.
The plot is straight forward but touches all the main points.
March 9, 2025
64/240 for Mama in 2025
2015 Review:
Outstanding. I identified so closely with Tambu and her quest for education and in turn a better life. Loved it and would highly recommend it to anyone who has ever dreamed of moving up in the world. Also recommend it to those who may have taken their education for granted, which is most of us.
2025 Review:
Wow, I recognized this book as outstanding when I first read it ten years ago, but reading it now a decade later, I was able to see and understand so many more of the layers and dynamics that I was blind to with ten years less of life experience and education. This book is truly exceptional and a must read as well as a must re-read! Looking forward to what new depths I’ll be able to access and appreciate with my next re-read of this remarkable novel.
2015 Review:
Outstanding. I identified so closely with Tambu and her quest for education and in turn a better life. Loved it and would highly recommend it to anyone who has ever dreamed of moving up in the world. Also recommend it to those who may have taken their education for granted, which is most of us.
2025 Review:
Wow, I recognized this book as outstanding when I first read it ten years ago, but reading it now a decade later, I was able to see and understand so many more of the layers and dynamics that I was blind to with ten years less of life experience and education. This book is truly exceptional and a must read as well as a must re-read! Looking forward to what new depths I’ll be able to access and appreciate with my next re-read of this remarkable novel.
August 15, 2014
Exceptionally breathtaking
December 13, 2024
My favorite book, always grounding to re-read
March 3, 2014
Love the narrator.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews