Fiction – paperback; Faber & Faber; 384 pages; 2020.
Shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body is one of the most powerful pieces of fiction I’ve read in a long time.
It’s a challenging read, in all kinds of ways, not least because of the unfamiliar (to me) African setting and cultural references, the second-person point-of-view and the author’s tendency to skip over detail so that I often had to reread passages to interpret what was happening.
But its POWER comes from the way in which it made me see the world from a completely different perspective as I walked in the shoes of the main character, Tambudzai, a woman from Zimbabwe who has fallen on hard times. Tambudzai’s struggle to keep going, to get herself back on track, despite the direst of circumstances, is deeply affecting, so much so that when I finished this book it left me in a deep funk for days afterwards.
Precarious circumstances
When the book opens Tambudzai is living in a run-down youth hostel in downtown Harare. She’s quit her successful mid-level job in an advertising agency in protest against her white colleagues taking her ideas and presenting them as their own. It’s a decision that shows Tambudzai’s strength of character, but it has terrible repercussions, for now, without a regular income, her living arrangements have become precarious.
The novel traces Tambudzai’s various attempts to improve her situation. When she gets a job as a teacher she takes a room in a widow’s house, but even then the money is tight and she must scrimp and save — and even steal edible plants from the widow’s garden to survive. Later, when she is fired from her job — not unreasonably, it has to be said — Tambudzai must pull herself up again.
A chance encounter with her former boss from the advertising agency she fled leads to a job for a travel start-up company. It’s the perfect opportunity to start afresh, to make a good impression and to advance her career.
In the beginning, she does exactly that, but Tambudzai’s success is limited by her inability to be anything other than herself, for a younger colleague with more get up and go, more energy and more willingness to manipulate things for her own ends, effectively leapfrogs Tambudzai’s standing in the company. It’s heartbreaking to see such a resilient, fiercely independent woman being overshadowed in this way.
Final part of trilogy
This Mournable Body is the final part of a trilogy — following on from Nervous Conditions and The Book of Not — but it works as a standalone. That said, I’m sure Tambudzai’s story might resonate even more if you have read the previous instalments.
Even so, it is clear from this novel alone that Tambudzai is a complicated, complex character, someone whose family expected big things of her. She’s well educated, having fled her small village to become the first in her family to get a degree, but she struggles with her mental health and has no reliable support network — no friends, no family, no colleagues — to help her.
A series of poor decisions and an inability to get herself out of a cycle of “boom” and “bust” means she never achieves the success she feels she deserves. It’s almost as though she can’t quite tap into her full potential and can’t rise above the issues — personal and otherwise — that hold her back.
When she eventually goes back to her home village to run tours for the travel company, it’s not the recipe for success for which she might have dreamed. She’s effectively selling her own people’s poverty as a tourist gimmick and the role she plays in this is just that — a role, one which she finds increasingly more difficult to play.
This novel is a searing indictment of cultural imperialism, structural racism and gender inequality in 1990s Zimbabwe. I’ve not been so incensed by the thwarted potential of a fictional character since I read Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure more than 30 years ago. Expect to see This Mournable Body in my books of the year list come December.
Reading Matters 
This definitely qualifies for a place on my tottering book tower. But to do it justice, I think it may not be quite at the moment. With a head full of pandemic-related issues, I think that it might qualify as ‘too difficult’ to get a considered reading from me. But this is an enticing review. I will read this book.
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I really had to immerse myself in this and read it large chunks. I don’t think I could have just read 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there and understood what was going on. I want to read the other two in the trilogy now.
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And I will. I’ve already bookmarked – though not ordered – it from the library
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I borrowed this from the library but I’m tempted to go buy my own edition now as I feel I need to reread it at some point.
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Good advice!
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From what I’ve heard, I’ve think I’ll do that too. I’ve asked my library to get the other two, and I want to read them first.
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I hope your library can source them. Book 2 appears to be a little difficult to get for some reason.
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Well, things are abnormal at the moment. Mails with international books were disrupted at our end, and now we’ve ended lockdown they’re being disrupted at your end. I’m not chasing books such as this one right now, it’s too hard and I’ve got plenty else to read.
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So you order many international books, Lisa? It’s not something I’ve ever contemplated… as for mail, our local postal service is now only delivering letters every second day so they can focus on delivering parcels 5 days a week. Must say it’s one of the things I miss about the UK… 6 days a week delivery and super-quick. Sometimes you could order stuff online by noon and it would be at your door that same afternoon! Here I can wait up to a month for something to arrive from the east coast. Tim reckons it’s like living in the 1950s 😂
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I don’t order a lot, mostly only translations recommended by Stu or from the Shadow Giller, but I’ve wanted more this year because of the authors I heard talk at the Edinburgh Festival.
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I guess I’m fortunate cos my kindle is attached to UK address / credit card, so I buy a lot of ebooks that I can’t get here.
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The literature of sub-Saharan Africa seems to be a powerhouse of new writing and at one or two books a year I am of course not making headway. I will do my best to get hold of this one or maybe the first.
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Shamefully, I’ve read only a handful of novels from Africa in my life. This was my first from Zimbabwe. I think I need to rectify this and begin to hunt out novels from Nigeria, Ghana and so on. I can’t say I enjoyed this one — it took me right out of my comfort zone in so many ways — but it left a long lasting impression. I’ve given it five stars on GoodReads.
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I’ve been seeking out African authors for a few years and there are definitely some wonderful authors. Nigeria seems to produce a lot of really interesting writers.
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I think I need to explore more… might be my “project” for 2021…
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An excellent idea….
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I have this, but had heard that it is a bit disjointed if you haven’t read the other two books so I haven’t been quite sure whether to start it or not. Sounds like the kind of read that you need to set aside time for.
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I didn’t find it disjointed at all. In fact I didn’t even know it was a trilogy until I told someone I was reading it and they asked if I’d read the previous two. But yes, it’s one to set aside large chunks of time to read; there’s a LOT to digest in it. Made me realise I know absolutely nothing about Zimbabwean culture outside of Robert Mugabe being leader seemingly forever…
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That’s good to hear Kim. My knowledge of Zimbabwe is pretty scant too I’m afraid.
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