Another Gem of a Book

First of all, huge apologies for not updating! This is me grovelling, rubbing my palms together…

E jo
Emabinu
Iweliwe o!

And now that we’re cool…






I’ve just finished reading Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga. What a book! Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m behind. It’s been around since 1988 and I’m only just getting to it. Well, to use a cliché…actually, I won’t use a cliché! I find it weird though, the pattern that my reading seems to have taken on in the last couple of months, since I started working in Publishing. I’m either going way back to read the all-important, groundbreaking books I’ve always wanted to read, and have never quite got round to, or I’m reading way, way, way ahead, to titles that won’t be out until March/April next year. Kinda cool, huh.

On my retro book menu, still waiting to be devoured, are Perfume by Patrick Suskind and The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. The old skool greats I’ve just read and come to love are The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah and Nervous Conditions.

Back to Nervous Conditions…what a book! For something that was written over 18 years ago, I’m amazed at how aptly it captures things, how advanced and perceptive its treatment of the cultural miscellany of the individuals in a colonised country are. Those are issues that are still being faced now. Whether that means nothing has changed since 1988 (which is very worrying indeed) or that Dangarembga saw so well to the heart of the matter all those years ago (which is a sure sign that it’s the truth) I feel I’ve discovered a gem of a book. Rather than being polemic, it’s an exploration of the cultural identity and displacement in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

The characters were all so alive, and the language was just…mmm…I don’t know…juicy. You could tell it was in direct translation from a native dialect, and that gave it a weighty, sincere, beautiful dynamic. I loved Tambudzai’s lightening sharp mind, and the hunger, deep down in her belly, to better herself and overcome her disadvantaged beginnings so she could take care of her little siblings. I loved Nyasha’s intellectual enquiry, and how her being slightly avant-garde made her question many of the native traditions of her parents’ people, and how at the same time, quite unpredictably, she championed the causes of local practises, when it seemed the western ones (brought in by missionaries) were just thinly veiled ways of manipulating her people. Babamukuru, the benevolent but grumpy, patriarch, who said “Er” before everything, and his wife Maiguru, who worshipped her husband, called him her "daddy-sweet" and pretended to be stupid even though she had a Masters in Philosophy just so he wouldn’t think she was undermining his authority; the four of them, placed side by side, created a robust framework in which the theme of the book could operate.

Nyasha’s character posed the most thought provoking questions of all. Will the day ever come when the worldwide model of civilisation is not built solely on Western paradigms? Will the levels of personal development to which we aspire ever be independent of a desire to, for instance, a)sound more and more anglicised b)own a foreign passport c) know the intricacies of the Battle of Waterloo but nothing about the Benin Empire?

Or has the standard been set? Is it damage control from here on in? There’s a song called Beautiful Struggle by Talib Kweli. This is what Nyasha encapsulates in the pastoral setting of 1960s Rhodesia. The only problem is, as beautiful as the struggle was, as noble as her intentions were, the oxymoron of being a Westernised Local was at the very core of her existence. The book ended with Nyasha going mad….

Is there an answer to cultural miscellany?


Many times, I felt like getting a pencil and underlining whole chapters, because the observations were so clear eyed and so damn right, but my mind overruled. Besides, Auntie Jackie says it’s wrong to scribble in books! The humour was there, but controlled. The kind that made you do a knowing smile and shake your head. The kind that made me stop reading for a while on the train to work, think about what I had just read, agree with what I had just read, identify with what I had just read. It was expertly rendered humour, because it wasn’t far out or fantastic – it was uncluttered, simple, the wryness of everyday life.

On a lighter note, I’m really fascinated by sadza, which is what the characters ate a lot of in the book. I really want to try it so if anyone knows a good place in London to try Zimbabwean food, please let me know.

If you don’t already own a copy of Nervous Conditions, please I beg you, sort yourself out!

And Tsitsi Dangarembga you’re a star.