The Story Archive

Nervous Conditions

Tsitsi Dangarembga · 1988 CE · Novel · Zimbabwean · Contemporary

Tambudzai's brother dies at the mission school and she is handed his place, moving from a homestead where she grew and sold maize to cover her own fees into her uncle Babamukuru's house, with its books, its plumbing and its rules about what a girl may say at the table. Her cousin Nyasha has come back from England with no Shona left, reads everything, argues with her father and has begun refusing food. The first novel in English by a Black Zimbabwean woman, and it takes its title from Sartre's preface to Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, which the corpus does not hold.

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Attributes

Genre
Coming-of-AgePsychological
Theme
Coming of AgeColonialismIdentity & SelfClass & InequalityIndividual vs Society
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
HeroineMentorThe Double
Plot structure
BildungsromanConfession
Symbol / motif
The HouseThe HarvestThe Book / Manuscript
Conflict
vs Societyvs Self
Mode / tone
RealistIronic
Culture / tradition
Zimbabwean

Closest analogues