Nervous Conditions
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- 9,99 €
Publisher Description
FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLISTED AUTHOR OF THIS MOURNABLE BODY,ONE OF THE BBC'S 100 WOMEN FOR 2020
'UNFORGETTABLE' Alice Walker 'THIS IS THE BOOK WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR' Doris Lessing 'A UNIQUE AND VALUABLE BOOK.' Booklist 'AN ABSORBING PAGE-TURNER' Bloomsbury Review 'A MASTERPIECE' Madeleine Thien 'ARRESTING' Kwame Anthony Appiah
Two decades before Zimbabwe would win independence and ended white minority rule, thirteen-year-old Tambudzai Sigauke embarks on her education. On her shoulders rest the economic hopes of her parents, siblings, and extended family, and within her burns the desire for independence. A timeless coming-of-age tale, and a powerful exploration of cultural imperialism, Nervous Conditions charts Tambu's journey to personhood in a fledgling nation.
'With its searing observations, devastating exploration of the state of "not being", wicked humour and astonishing immersion into the mind of a young woman growing up and growing old before her time, the novel is a masterpiece.' Madelein Thien
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Tambu, an adolescent living in colonial Rhodesia of the '60s, seizes the opportunity to leave her rural community to study at the missionary school run by her wealthy, British-educated uncle. With an uncanny and often critical self-awareness, Tambu narrates this skillful first novel by a Zimbabwe native. Like many heroes of the bildungsroman, Tambu, in addition to excelling at her curriculum, slowly reaches some painful conclusions--about her family, her proscribed role as a woman, and the inherent evils of colonization. Tambu often thinks of her mother, ``who suffered from being female and poor and uneducated and black so stoically.'' Yet, she and her cousin, Nyasha, move increasingly farther away from their cultural heritage. At a funeral in her native village, Tambu admires the mourning of the women, ``shrill, sharp, shiny, needles of sound piercing cleanly and deeply to let the anguish in, not out.'' In many ways, this novel becomes Tambu's keening--a resonant, eloquent tribute to the women in her life, and to their losses.
