Tsitsi Dangarembga

Tsitsi Dangarembga was born in Mutoko, in what was then Southern Rhodesia, and spent part of her childhood in England before returning home for school. She went back to Britain to study medicine at Cambridge, but the isolation and racism of the experience wore her down, and she left the course unfinished after a few years, returning to Rhodesia as the war for independence intensified.

Back home she studied psychology, worked in advertising and joined a theatre troupe, Zambuko, that staged politically pointed drama. She then trained in film directing in Berlin. In 1988 she published Nervous Conditions, a novel about a girl navigating colonial schooling and family expectation, believed to be the first published in English by a Black woman from Zimbabwe. Publishers had shown little interest until a British feminist press took it on.

In 1996 she wrote and directed Everyones Child, the first feature film made by a Black Zimbabwean woman, and went on to found a production company supporting local filmmakers. She eventually completed the story begun in her first novel with The Book of Not and This Mournable Body, the latter shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020.

That same year she was arrested at a protest in Harare holding a placard calling for reform, and was later convicted of inciting public violence, receiving a suspended sentence. She has continued writing and speaking out since.