Harare Review of Books

256 pages.

First published in 2006.

Finished reading on 23 Nov 2020.

Genre: Fiction.

A sequel to Nervous Conditions, this is a powerful and engaging story about one young woman’s quest to redefine the personal and political forces that threaten to engulf her. As its title suggests, this is also a book about denial and unfulfilled expectations and about the theft of the self that remains one of colonialism’s most pernicious legacies. The novel disrupts any comfortable sense of closure to the dilemmas of colonial modernity explored in Nervous Conditions and as such is a fitting sequel.

So many people did not know about this book, and thought the sequel to Nervous Conditions was This Mournable Body–which is not surprising, as this book has been impossible to find anywhere. Not in bookshops, not online, nowhere. I held off reading the third book in the trilogy when it was released as I’m intensely systematic like that, and was so grateful when a friend lent me this copy.

So, well, the last third (or quarter) is some really good writing, to my relief. And I’d been warned about how unrelentingly bleak this book is, how depressing, and wow, it is.

Looking forward to completing the trilogy.

Rated: 6/10