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Feb
20
2024
By The African Mirror
Nervous Conditions: on translating one of Zimbabwe’s most famous novels into Shona

Nervous Conditions: on translating one of Zimbabwe’s most famous novels into Shona

LITERATURE
THE publishing journey of Zimbabwean writer and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions wasn’t easy. Yet the novel is today considered by many as one of Africa’s 100 best books of the 20th century and is studied at universities around the world. TINASHE MUSHAKAVANHU, Junior Research Fellow, University of Oxford When she submitted the manuscript to publishing houses in Zimbabwe in the early 1980s, they all turned it down. Dangarembga felt at the time that it was “very difficult for men to accept the things that women write and want to write about: and the men (were) the publishers”. It was…
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May
09
2023
By The African Mirror
ZIMBABWE: Prize-winning novelist acquitted

ZIMBABWE: Prize-winning novelist acquitted

NEWS
NYASHA CHINGONO ACCLAIMED Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga was acquitted on Monday by the country's High Court for staging an anti-government protest in 2020, for which she had initially received a six-month suspended jail sentence and a fine. Dangarembga was found guilty by a lower court in 2022 on charges of participating in a public gathering with intent to incite public violence while breaking COVID-19 protocols, after a protest criticising the government's efforts to deal with corruption and a struggling economy in July 2020. Dozens of political activists were arrested at the time. "I can confirm that she has been acquitted. As her…
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Mar
02
2021
By The African Mirror
Tsitsi Dangarembga’s art and activism

Tsitsi Dangarembga’s art and activism

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
BARBARA BOSWELL THE artist and activist elaborates on her work and the intricate, necessary relationship between her artistic production and political action in Zimbabwe. The last week of July 2020 was one of extreme paradoxes for Tsitsi Dangarembga. Three days after her novel This Mournable Body was shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize, the Zimbabwean writer, playwright and filmmaker found herself in prison after her arrest in Harare. Dangarembga, part of a two-women protest, was standing next to a highway, silently holding a placard protesting against state corruption and the imprisonment of journalist Hopewell Chin’ono. Dangarembga and her friend, Julie Barnes, were…
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Aug
22
2020
By The African Mirror
Tsitsi Dangarembga and writing about pain and loss in Zimbabwe

Tsitsi Dangarembga and writing about pain and loss in Zimbabwe

LITERATURE
ROSEMARY CHIKAFA-CHIPIRO, Lecturer, University of Zimbabwe TSITSI Dangarembga has made a name for herself as a writer, filmmaker and activist in Zimbabwe. She gained international acclaim with her debut novel Nervous Conditions (1988), which became the first published English novel by a black woman from Zimbabwe. The BBC named it one of the top 100 books that have shaped the world. Now, over three decades later, Dangarembga’s latest novel – This Mournable Body, the third in a trilogy that began with Nervous Conditions and the subject of this review – has been placed on the longlist for the 2020 Booker…
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