This Mournable Body, Tsitsi Dangarembga
This Mournable Body, Tsitsi Dangarembga
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This Mournable Body
A Novel

Author: Tsitsi Dangarembga

Narrator: Adenrele Ojo

Unabridged: 11 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/07/2018

Synopsis

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.

About Tsitsi Dangarembga

Tsitsi Dangarembga is the author of This Mournable Body, short-listed for the Booker Prize, and two previous novels including Nervous Conditions, winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize. She is also a filmmaker, playwright, and the director and founder of the Institute of Creative Arts for Progress in Africa Trust. She lives in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer on December 30, 2020

I had the pleasure to put some questions to the author on BBC Radio 4 Front Row in October. The recording covers my question on the first line of the novel (at 17:20-19:05). [URL not allowed] Now shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. It is the third part of a trilogy – after th......more

Goodreads review by Meike on July 03, 2021

Winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade 2021 Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020 First of all a major shout-out to this year's Booker judges for including a novel from Zimbabwe - needless to say, the prize is often way too Euro-centric. By including texts like this, the Western readership......more

Goodreads review by Lorraine on July 04, 2019

Emotionally and socially evocative. The second person narrative is brutal and harsh. The "You" is so accusatory and reproachful. Like a castigation. Throughout all four parts of the book I felt like the author was chastising Tambu for having wasted opportunities thrown her way. On the other hand, it......more

Goodreads review by Michael on June 17, 2022

This is a wonderful addition to the Nervous Conditions series by the great Zimbabwe writer TsiTsi Dangarembga following her protagonist Tambuzai’s trials and tribulations following her exit from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in The Book of Not. It is extremely well-written and an excellent analysi......more

Goodreads review by Paul on October 05, 2020

Your lack of choices confronts you angrily. But once more you tell yourself on oath you will not succumb to more bad energy than you already have. from the earlier version of this novel, then titled Chronicle of an Indomitable Daughter This Mournable Body is the third and last of the trilogy which beg......more

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