This Mournable Body

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.

Un roman infricosator despre obstacolele cu care se confrunta femeile din Zimbabwe, realizat de unul dintre cei mai notabili autori ai tarii. Constient de perspectivele sale dupa ce a parasit un loc de munca stagnant, Tambudzai se afla traind intr-un hostel de tineret degradat din centrul Hararei. Din motive care includ perspectivele sale financiare si varsta ei, ea se muta la pensiunea unei vaduve si, in cele din urma, isi gaseste de lucru ca profesor de biologie.