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    This Mournable Body: A Novel
    Unavailable
    This Mournable Body: A Novel
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    This Mournable Body: A Novel
    Ebook367 pages5 hours

    This Mournable Body: A Novel

    By Tsitsi Dangarembga

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 BOOKER PRIZE

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateAug 7, 2018
    ISBN9781555978624

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    Reviews for This Mournable Body

    3.5/5

    55 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I got the point of this, but at the same time I felt a sustained sense of discomfort while reading due to the combination of Tambu‘s self-centered actions and the unceasing “you” which points the finger back towards the reader. It wasn‘t a pleasurable reading experience. However, the author has lived an incredible life and stood up for what she believes in, and I really admire what she tries to do with her writing.
    • 2/5
      This second-person tale of a floundering and embittered Zimbabwean woman started off well enough. While it was never a riveting or emotional read, the first several chapters kept me interested. Unfortunately, I felt like nothing about this novel moved in an upward motion. The protagonist's actions were a never-ending series of blunders resulting in tedious events. Too much of a slog. Best part: the excellent snapshot of modern day Zimbabwe.
    • 4/5
      At the opening of this book we meet Tambudzai, central character of Dangarembga's two previous novels, at a low spot in her life. She's walked out of her prestigious job in an advertising agency on finding that (white) co-workers are taking credit for her work, but soon finds that a new generation of bright (thin) young women has come onto the Harare job-market since she was last looking for employment, and she's rapidly losing self-confidence. Finding somewhere to live has been every bit as difficult as finding a job. But the last thing she wants to do is seek the help of her family back in the village who made such huge sacrifices to enable her to go to a good school, and she's even more determined to stay away from the aunts and cousins who were in the bush fighting for freedom whilst she was getting her "O" and "A" levels.After a brief, disastrous, spell as a teacher, she finds herself back in the hands of her family anyway, and then she's offered a job by Tracy, the white woman who was promoted over her head at school and in the advertising agency, but still seems to think of Tambudzai as a friend. Tracy is running an eco-friendly safari company based on her parents' old farm, and for a while Tambudzai slots happily back into businesswoman mode. But sooner or later, she's got to face the ghosts of the village and the war...This book has its irritations: I didn't like the way it's all in second-person narrative, for instance, and there are passages which are rather over-written, but it was a very interesting look at what it's like to live on that divide between tradition and globalisation in modern Africa. In some ways very similar to the themes that come up in European and American novels of fifty years ago (the child of a working-class family that goes to college and finds it doesn't fit in any more with either world), but in some ways very different (the trauma of the guerrilla war, the legacy of colonialism).
    • 5/5
      An emotionally and socially evocative novel, by the author of the fabulous "Nervous Conditions". A young Zimbabwean woman struggles with maintaining her cultural & familial dignity while trying to be successful. There are some intense stretches where it seems she may dissolve into a puddle of despair and hopeful moments as she tries to overcome self-doubt instilled by institutional racism and cultural sexism. I think the lessons in this tale are specific to Zimbabwe's history, yet also universal regarding the depths of despair and heights of hope and joy which people experience as they pursue their dreams.