Nervous Conditions

Nervous Conditions is the 1988 debut novel by Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga. The semi-autobiographical novel focuses on the story of a Shona family in post-colonial Rhodesia during the 1960s, and centers on the themes of race, colonialism, and gender . It was the first book published by a black woman from Zimbabwe in English. Nervous Conditions won Best Book of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Africa section) in 1989.The title is taken from the introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth (1961). 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 (2018) as the third.