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 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.