We were beside ourselves. My head reeled, as if I’d had too much to drink. I took the novels out of the suitcase one by one, opened them, studied the portraits of the authors, and passed them on to Luo. Brushing them with the tips of my fingers made me feel as if my pale hands were in touch with human lives.
- an extract from "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" by Dai Sijie (China, born 1954)
One of Africa's 100 Best Books of the 20th Century
One of Nicola's 100 best books for inspiration in the 21st century!
Tambudzai - Tambu for short - dreams of education, but her hopes only materialise after her brother's death, when she goes to live with her uncle. At his mission school, her critical faculties develop rapidly, bringing her face to face with a new set of conflicts involving her uncle, his education and his family. Tsitsi Dangarembga's quietly devastating first novel offers a portrait of a young girl growing up in the still colonised Zimbabwe of the 1960s and 1970s, where enlightenment brings its own profound dilemmas.
From the Introduction by Kwame Anthony Appiah, Princeton University, June 2004:
"Each novel is a message in a bottle cast into the great ocean of literature from somewhere else (even if it was written and published last week in your home town); and what makes the novel available to its readers is not shared values or beliefs or experiences but the human capacity to conjure new worlds in the imagination. A fully realized novel provides readers with everything they need for their imaginations to go to work. It is because the world Tsitsi Dangarembga opens up in this novel is so fully realized, so compelling, that Tambu has found so many friends in so many places around the planet."
From the opening sentence, readers were carried along by the story of Tambu and her family, especially the other female characters in her life, namely her mother, her uncle’s wife Maiguru, her cousin Nyasha and her mother’s younger sister Lucia. They liked the authenticity of Tambu’s voice and the honesty with which she relates her very strong desire to escape the clutches of poverty and the condition of being a woman in a patriarchal society. They enjoyed the descriptions of the different settings, especially the homestead and the family gatherings with all the attendant customs, which they found very vivid and made them feel like they were there. Readers liked the writing style, which they described as light-hearted but with serious undertones. A few readers said they could feel the author’s anger pervading the pages of the book. They empathised strongly with Nyasha who they felt epitomised the conflict between two cultures and ways of being, and they were moved by the outcome of her tragic story. One reader felt that the author used Nyasha’s voice to sum up the devastating effect of both colonialism on a person’s mind and a patriarchal society on women. The book averaged an 8.5 out of 10, the joint highest score of the season!
Read in Season 10 of Nicola's Book Club, whose theme was "First Novels" (for full list, type BCS10 in Search box)
