The narrative revolves around Tambudzai Sigauke (or simply Tambu), a Zimbabwean woman who struggles through life looking for opportunities for a better life.
Throughout her life, Zimbabwe has haunted the writer (Dangarembga), tormenting her like an abusive lover — she has spent most of her life writing searing prose excoriating the country’s swashbuckling politicians.
In many ways, the “nervous conditions” cited in the book are a metaphor for the fragility of our own struggles in Kenya today.
In a few minutes I shall feel under my feet that secret land which I loved as much as I hated it; which satisfied me as no other country did and yet let me hunger as none had done before… in whose hot deserts I had thirsted and in whose icy tundras I had wept because of the cold… that which robbed me of five years of my young life but which repaid me ten-fold with a wealth of experiences… The long-forgotten smells came back: old leather mixed with the odour of sour bread, the stink of coarse Russian tobacco and there was also a new smell, a gamey odour, the sort of smell met with in gypsies…. most noticeable among the captured Mongolian troops.”
These words from the German soldier-poet Erich Dwinger are about Soviet Russia, a country that haunted him after he had fought in it during the Second World War. He writes about this experience in Wiedersehen mit Sowjet-Russland (A Date with Soviet Russia) as he crossed into Russia for the first time after the war.
