Nervous Conditions
Book description
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…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Nervous Conditions as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I loved this novel about a young woman growing up in what was then Rhodesia. I’m a total sucker for coming-of-age stories.
Tambu, the narrator, is a village girl who is chosen by her uncle, the headmaster of the missionary school in the larger town, to become a scholar and hope of the family. I love how we get Tambu's experience and determination, of course, but also her careful analysis of how to change yet stay true to her roots.
The author doesn’t explain a lot for those of us who don't know the region, but we get what we…
Another remarkable first novel, and the first of a trilogy, now complete. Dangarembga is a multi-talented Zimbabwean woman—filmmaker, playwright, novelist, and not least, political activist. A coming-of-age tale set in the late colonial period [when Zimbabwe was Rhodesia], the focus is on two girls, cousins. Tambu, the narrator, begins the book this way: “I was not sorry when my brother died." Now, that will get your attention [we gradually learn why]. But it is her cousin Nyasha who will grab you: brilliant, passionate, troubled, sickly. In 2018 the BBC named Nervous Conditions one of the 100 stories that have shaped…
From Kenneth's list on Southern Africa as picked by a historian.
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