“The novel delivers its power, in a protagonist lost and misguided, naive and socially clumsy, but resilient beyond many we meet, determined to success but questioning more and more what that success must look like. “

Nervous Conditions does not have the scope or scale of more classic or contemporary novels of African colonialism: it’s about a young girl finding her way through to an education in newly-independent Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe). 

Tambu’s discipline and scholarship is irrelevant to her status as female, and this dominates every discussion of her future. Her father cannot understand why she would want to continue schooling; her uncle cannot understand why she should not (at least after her older brother dies). With schooling comes opportunity, wealth, status, career, like her uncle has, though the only decent school she might attend is a private missionary school. The tensionAs a literary term, I often use this in place of "conflict" ... More in the story is largely around these brothers (Tambu’s father and uncle) as they maneuver for Tambu’s future, even while she attempts to navigate the demanding and changeable relationships in both households and the socially progressive attitudes of the students she meets. 

This is largely a book of relationships across the extended family, and we move from scene to scene, from public ceremonies to private talks, learning about the hypocrisies and sacrifices all have made though performatively cover over, from their pride and inadequacies to traditions and modern mores. Underneath all of this, of course, though author Dangarembga sketches it carefully, is the absence of choices, for women with their men, for everyone beneath a formerly colonized peoples now free of white politics but never white cultural hegemony with all its modern vices.

I was struck by several scenes, but none so much as Tambu’s first arrival at her uncle’s home, marveling at the enormity of his home, only to soon recognize that the building is actually just his garage. It is in these moments that the novel delivers its power, in a protagonist lost and misguided, naive and socially clumsy, but resilient beyond many we meet, determined to success but questioning more and more what that success must look like. 

This is not a novel of grand gestures, of national politics or clerical sermons. It is of one girl and her pathway through her family, and for that hugely refreshing and worthwhile.