Feminist novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga one step away from snatching the Booker Prize

By Edward Tsumele

Zimbabwe’s celebrated novelist and filmmaker, Tsitsi Dangarembga  is getting closer to walking away with a Booker Prize as from being longlisted, she is now shortlisted.

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Her local publisher Jacana Media confirmed yesterday that the author of the novel This Mournable Body has now reached a milestone, and could easily walk away with this much sought literary prize come October when the results will be announced.

”This sublime novel has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize! What a boost for Zimbabwean and southern African novelists. Congratulations to Tsitsi.
We are over the moon to be the southern African publishers of This Mournable Body.

The Booker judges wrote:

‘In this tense and psychologically charged novel, Tsitsi Dangarembga channels the hope and potential of one young girl and a fledgling nation to lead us on a journey to discover where lives go after hope has departed,’ Jacana Media said in  a statement yesterday.

If Dangarembga walks away with this prize, she will be the first black novelist to do so, and it will be a milestone in the feminist writer’s literary journey that saw her first hailed when she wrote Nervous Conditions in 1988.

In July, just a few days after news broke out that she was longlisted, instead of being celebrated, she was arrested by Police and slept in police cells. Her crime was to protest against the authorities because of the difficulties ordinary Zimbabweans face because of economic stagnation, and 90% unemployment. She appeared in court the following day and was released on bail.