None other than the BBC has included Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel in its list of 100 stories that have changed the world. That literature can change the world is an ambitious and certainly idealistic claim. I understand, however, that this book, which has now finally been translated into Norwegian, fits into such a list. The novel from southern Africa shows that the dream of freedom can come true for the oppressed, the colonized, the poor, the women. Bone in the nose Tambudzai is thirteen years old and refuses to mourn when his brother dies. Because when he is out of the way, opportunities for further schooling open up for her. Growing up conditions are tough in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel “Nervous states”. The girl’s mother bursts out: But Tambudzai wants to throw off the yoke. The way to freedom is through education, she thinks, and is delighted when she gets a place at the mission school where her uncle is the headmaster. He has made a career; he has studied in England and got himself a respectable job with ample pay. The year is 1969, the country is Rhodesia. It will still be just over a decade before the country gains its independence and becomes Zimbabwe. A modern classic Sometimes you approach a book with awe. It may be because you have great respect for the author’s previous works, or because the book has already been canonized as a classic. I haven’t read Dangarembga before, but this is what I got: In addition to writing novels, the 64-year-old author has directed around twenty films. She is an essayist, human rights activist, just received the Norwegian Writers’ Association’s Freedom of Expression Award and has delivered a text to the art project Fremtidsbiblioteket. WAS ARRESTED: Tsitsi Dangarembga during a protest against corruption in Harare in 2020. She was arrested later that day, when the authorities had banned protests on the anniversary of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s election victory in 2017.TWO YEARS LATER: Dangarembga after a court hearing in Harare 4 August 2022. She was charged with inciting violence by protesting corruption and the legal system in Zimbabwe. She was first convicted but later acquitted in 2023. So how is this debut book? Tsitsi Dangarembga depicts a society where the black women are at the very bottom of the ladder. Nevertheless, this is a fun novel, filled with youthful exuberance and, not least, hope. It immediately caused a stir when it came out in 1988. The novel was published by a small, feminist publishing house in England, since the home country’s publishers were anxious about the attacks on Zimbabwe’s male chauvinist culture. The following year, Dangarembga was awarded The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Fiction and the book was published in Zimbabwe. Doris Lessing herself, who herself grew up in Rhodesia, stated that This is the novel we have been waiting for. Because “Nervous conditions” is a novel about freedom. Freedom for Tambudzai and for all black Africans who have been oppressed under the British Empire. Dangarembga has followed the girl further in her life, in two more novels. They will come in Norwegian in 2024 and 2025, also those translated by Merete Alfsen. Listen to the review in Open Book: Oral and funny I-narrator Tambudzai sets big goals in life. And she wants to reach those goals, even if it comes at the expense of others. She does not become a victim for whom we feel sympathy, but is, on the other hand, a very lively young person with a voice not so dissimilar to that of Anne Frank. It is young, confident and full of faith in the future. It can also remind you of Elena in Elena Ferrante’s wonderful quartet about “Mi brilliant friend”, a parallel that the publisher has also thought about. Points of similarity are the friends, here the cousins, who are both inseparable and competitors at the same time. Both authors depict a class journey from uneducated poverty to mediated academia with all the good and bad that comes with it. Another common feature is the keen ability to observe. Dangarembga allows Tambudzai to record how the women around her all suffer under a traditional distribution of power where the men decide. At the same time, both women and men are burdened by an overriding colonial power. Bigger than itself The novel contains ten long chapters and spans a three-year period. If Dangarembga enters one concrete family and its conflicts, she also writes about lives that are forever characterized by being at the mercy of others. Cunningly, she describes the white missionaries: Tambudzai’s alternation between admiring the missionaries and their school system on the one hand, and criticizing their rampant brainwashing on the other, is subtly portrayed throughout the novel. No exoticization There are many people in the extended family, and several of them have different names that alternate according to the degree of politeness with which they are addressed. This can be confusing for a Norwegian reader. I like that translator Merete Alfsen does not explain, but leaves the text, directly as it is, addressed to an African reader who takes all the references. The book will not be adapted for a European audience. The author trusts that the readers, whoever they are, will eventually find out. And we do. “Nervous conditions” is a painful, playful and educational novel. It is also political, in the dream of liberation and change. news reviews Photo: Forlaget Press Title: “Nervous conditions” Original title: “Nervous Conditions” Author: Tsitsi Dangarembga Genre: Novel Translator: Merete Alfsen Publisher: Press Number of pages: 279 Date: 15 May 2023
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“Nervous states” by Tsitsi Dangarembga – Reviews and recommendations
