Tsitsi Dangarembga
Tsitsi Dangarembga is a Zimbabwean novelist, playwright and filmmaker. Her debut novel Nervous Conditions was named by the BBC in 2018 as one of the top 100 books that have shaped the world. Her work covers culture, politics and identity, writing to recentre marginalized voices.
This Mournable Body
“You spend the morning writing a letter to your cousin Nyasha, who has become a filmmaker in Germany, in which you ask for advice concerning leaving Zimbabwe. You want nothing more than to break away from the implacable terror of every day you spend in your country - where you can no longer afford the odd dab of peanut butter to liven up the vegetables from Mai Manyanga’s garden or the petty comfort of perfumed soap - by going away and becoming a European.” 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 realityultimately 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. This homecoming, in Dangarembga’s tense and psychologically charged novel, culminates in an act of betrayal, revealing just how toxic the combination of colonialism and capitalism can be.
R 280.00
Nervous Conditions
FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLISTED AUTHOR OF THIS MOURNABLE BODY, ONE OF THE BBC'S 100 WOMEN FOR 2020 'UNFORGETTABLE' Alice Walker 'THIS IS THE BOOK WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR' Doris Lessing 'A UNIQUE AND VALUABLE BOOK.' Booklist 'AN ABSORBING PAGE-TURNER' Bloomsbury Review 'A MASTERPIECE' Madeleine Thien 'ARRESTING' Kwame Anthony Appiah Two decades before Zimbabwe would win independence and ended white minority rule, thirteen-year-old Tambudzai Sigauke embarks on her education. On her shoulders rest the economic hopes of her parents, siblings, and extended family, and within her burns the desire for independence. A timeless coming-of-age tale, and a powerful exploration of cultural imperialism, Nervous Conditions charts Tambu's journey to personhood in a nation that is also emerging. 'With its searing observations, devastating exploration of the state of "not being", wicked humour and astonishing immersion into the mind of a young woman growing up and growing old before her time, the novel is a masterpiece.' Madelein Thien
R 295.00
Book of Not
FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLISTED AUTHOR OF THIS MOURNABLE BODY and NERVOUS CONDITIONSONE OF THE BBC'S 100 WOMEN FOR 2020As Zimbabwe emerges into independence, Tambudzai Sigauke embarks on her second year at the Young Ladies' College of the Sacred Heart. Determined to excel, Tambu exhausts herself with her efforts to climb to the top of the school's honour rolls. The further she pushes herself, however, the farther she feels from any reward; and the roots of colonialism threaten to trip her at every step. The sequel to Nervous Conditions is as moving, darkly witty, and riveting as its predecessor.
R 305.00
Black and Female
'A woman's defiant fight to write.' ObserverBeing categorised as black and female does not constrain my writing. Writing assures me that I am more the merely blackness and femaleness. Writing assures me I am.This paradigm shifting essay collection weaves the personal and political in an illuminating exploration of internationally acclaimed novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga's complex relationship with race and gender. At once philosophical, intimate and urgent, Dangarmebga's landmark essays address the profound cultural and political questions that underpin her novels for the first time. From her experience of life with a foster family in Dover and the difficulty of finding a publisher as a young Zimbabwean novelist, to the ways in which colonialism continues to disrupt the lives and minds of those subjugated by empire, Dangarembga writes to recenter marginalised voices.Black and Female offers a powerful vision toward re-membering - to use Toni Morrison's word - those whose identities and experiences continue to be fractured by the intersections of history, race and gender.
R 330.00
