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This Mournable Body

A Novel

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About this listen

Anxious about her prospects after leaving a stagnant job, Tambudzai finds herself living in a run-down youth hostel in downtown Harare. For reasons that include her grim financial prospects and her age, she moves to a widow's boarding house and eventually finds work as a biology teacher. But at every turn in her attempt to make a life for herself, she is faced with a fresh humiliation, until the painful contrast between the future she imagined and her daily reality ultimately drives her to a breaking point.

In This Mournable Body, Tsitsi Dangarembga returns to the protagonist of her acclaimed first novel, Nervous Conditions, to examine how the hope and potential of a young girl and a fledgling nation can sour over time and become a bitter and floundering struggle for survival.

As a last resort, Tambudzai takes an ecotourism job that forces her to return to her parents' impoverished homestead. It is this homecoming, in Dangarembga's tense and psychologically charged novel, that culminates in an act of betrayal, revealing just how toxic the combination of colonialism and capitalism can be.

©2018 Tsitsi Dangarembga (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Fiction Africa
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Would've been enjoyable if narrator pronounced the Shona words &sing it better this disappointed readers

Great overview of life in post colonial Harare

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Why no Zimbabwean narrator?.. As per first novel.. Otherwise good book.. Still listenable but many local words mispronounced

Good follow on..

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I can't understand why an author of the stature of Tsitsi Dangarembga should have her character voiced in an American accent. This is not a translation, but a book set in a country where English is an official language. I'm sure Americans would be annoyed if they bought an audiobook of Catcher in the Rye only to discover it was narrated with a British accent, or the Great Gatsby in an Aussie twang.

This is not to say that the narrator mightn't do a great job with another book. It just feels completely disrespectful to the author and fellow Zimbabweans, and Africans altogether, to have made this very poor and inappropriate choice. I just can't listen to it without wondering how this is still happening when we've had months of introspection over Black Lives Matter. It really should be re-recorded.

Superb book ruined by inappropriate accent

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As a Zimbabwean, I was excited to see a book from a writer from my country on Audible. The story is great and touches on the challenges of mental ill health. As a native speaker, I did find the super poor pronunciation of the Shona and Ndebele words pretty distracting - and wished she had practiced with the author so that words would have sounded as the author intended.
Still enjoyed the book though 😊

Good story not sure about the narrator

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I got it off the Booker shortlist, having long been interested in the contemporary issues of Africa.

It took me a while to get started, and at first I found the second person narrative rather grating, but gradually became used to it.

The characters are richly drawn and inter-connected plausibly, though often through misunderstanding and misinterpreting each other, and after a series of adventures that builds into the climax of the tale.

The main protagonist does seem rather passive, rolling with events rather than in control of them, but I think that part of the authors point, demonstrating the triple alienation of being Black, female and older. Meanwhile more dynamic and often unscrupulous individuals shape the world around her.

By the end, I had really got involved with the characters, and their different perspectives, and internal battles with truth. The African situations, from the chaotic combi taxis, the importance of family, the disenchantment of the NGOs, the impact of tourism, the legacy of war all rang true.

is it good enough to win the Booker? I think so, but haven't read the competitors yet...

The unsatisfied life of a Zimbabwean

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