![]() ![]() Her sister has lost a leg in the war for independence and “now fends for two liberation struggle babies”, while her uncle is in a wheelchair after being hit by a stray bullet from a 21-gun salute to celebrate the birth of the new nation. It wasn’t until 18 years later that The Book of Not followed Tambu through her teenage years at the Young Ladies College of the Sacred Heart, and now This Mournable Body finds her bereft in her 30s, struggling to squeeze her feet into Lady Di pumps and make a life in the postcolonial Zimbabwe of the 1990s. ![]() The novel won the Commonwealth Writers’ prize, was widely translated and became a key text in postcolonial literature. The first instalment, Nervous Conditions, was published in 1988 and charted Tambu’s early childhood in 60s and 70s Rhodesia, where a kindly uncle gives her a chance to better herself by taking her away to his mission to be educated. ![]() This Mournable Body is the third part of a trilogy, published over a period of more than 30 years, which reflects sickness in the body politic of an earlier era through the life story of a village girl called Tambudzai (“Tambu”). Photograph: Zinyange Auntony/AFP/Getty Images Dangarembga being arrested during an anti-corruption protest march on 31 July in Harare. ‘I’m also a responsible citizen of Zimbabwe‘. ![]()
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