Tsitsi Dangarembga's Book 'This Mournable Body' is Finally Here

In the aftermath of having a president no one wanted, Tsitsi Dangarembga's new novel This Mournable Body is adding something new and exciting to talk about for Zimbabweans.

While Zimbabwean politics remained male dominated and unsurprising in this last election season, Zimbabwean women writers were at their peak as their books delved deeper into politics and social life. This has been the summer for Zimbabwean literature with books like Panashe Chigumadzi'sThese Bones Will Rise Again and Novuyo Tsuma'sHouse of Stone that came out in June.

Following these two writers, Dangarembga's third book This Mournable Body just dropped today and it continues the life of the protagonist Tambu from Dangarembga's epic novel Nervous Conditions. Dangarembga was the first black Zimbabwean woman to publish a novel in english, giving us one of the most epic first lines in literary history, "I was not sorry when my brother died."

We will finally get to read the final book in the trilogy that follows The Book of Not. The new novel explores Tambu's life as an adult as she finds herself leaving her job in an advertising agency and living in a youth hostel in Harare. She eventually finds a job as an ecotourist that will force her to return home and confront her rural background.

It's been twenty-nine years since Nervous Conditions, but the long wait is over and you can finally see the story come full circle.

Buy your copy of the novel here.