Nervous Conditions is a novel by Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga, first published in the United Kingdom in 1988. It was the first book published by a black woman from Zimbabwe in English.[1] Nervous Conditions won Best Book of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Africa section) in 1989.[1]
The semi-autobiographical novel[2] focuses on the story of a Shona family in post-colonial Rhodesia during the 1960s. Nervous Conditions is the first book of a trilogy, with The Book of Not (2006) as the second novel in the series, and This Mournable Body (2020) as the third. Nervous Conditions illustrates the dynamic themes of race, colonialism, and gender during the colonial period of present-day Zimbabwe. The title is taken from the introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth (1961).
