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Local novel among most influential 100 books

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AWARD-WINNING novelist and filmmaker, Tsitsi Dangarembga’s blockbuster novel Nervous Conditions has been listed among the BBC Culture’s 100 stories that shaped the world in which it was pegged at number 66.

AWARD-WINNING novelist and filmmaker, Tsitsi Dangarembga’s blockbuster novel Nervous Conditions has been listed among the BBC Culture’s 100 stories that shaped the world in which it was pegged at number 66.

BY LIFE & STYLE REPORTER

Dangarembga yesterday said she was overwhelmed by the development and the congratulatory messages she had received in the wake of the listing.

“I’m overwhelmed by all the wonderful congratulatory messages I’ve received on the inclusion of NERVOUS CONDITIONS in the BBC 100 books that most shaped the world list. Thank you all. It is lovely to be reminded do how kind we are in our hearts,” she posted on microblogging site, Twitter.

Although not a definitive list, The 100 Stories that Shaped the World series considers epic poems, plays and novels from around the world that have influenced history and changed mindsets.

Nervous Conditions is a semi-autobiographical story of Tambu, a young girl living on an impoverished Rhodesian farm in the late 1960s and is offered an opportunity to go to school following the sudden death of her brother Nhamo by her benefactor uncle. She has great aspirations for her personal development despite the obstacles of race, class and sex. The novel also interrogates the many facets of poverty and its effects.

The book, which was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 1989, has since been translated into a number of languages.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe was the only African novel that made it into the top 10 of the list, which also includes Homer’s The Odyssey, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, Hamlet by William Shakespeare and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.