This Mournable Body

Set in Zimbabwe in the years following independence from white-minority Rhodesian rule, the novel follows Tambudzai Sigauke, an educated but unemployed middle-aged woman whose life has collapsed into poverty and isolation.

Part 1, "Ebbing," opens with Tambudzai living in the Twiss Hostel in Harare, where she has exceeded the age limit for residents. Mrs. May, the hostel matron, arranges an interview at the Borrowdale home of Widow Riley, an elderly white woman who may have a cottage for rent, but the interview fails: The widow's maid refuses Tambudzai entry, and Widow Riley herself collapses on the garden path. On the combi (minibus) ride back, Tambudzai lies to a fellow passenger about owning a dahlia farm, fabricating a fantasy of success she desperately wishes were real.

At Market Square, Tambudzai watches her young hostelmate Gertrude stumble while boarding a combi in fashionable clothes. The crowd's mockery turns violent: Men shout obscenities, and a builder rips Gertrude's skirt from her body. Swept into the mob, Tambudzai pushes forward and reaches for a stone. A combi driver intervenes, shielding Gertrude with his own clothing, and the stone rolls from Tambudzai's hand. That evening, hostelmates turn hostile toward Tambudzai, who was seen in the mob.

She finds a room with Mai Manyanga, a boisterous widow whose crumbling house is the only option available. The room reeks of fungus, and her three housemates all have jobs, deepening her shame. She survives on porridge made from mealie meal (ground maize) and stolen vegetables, contemplating ending her life. She reflects on the family she has failed: her destitute mother, her sister Netsai who lost a leg in the liberation war, her uncle Babamukuru who uses a wheelchair, and her cousin Nyasha who has emigrated.

Mai Manyanga's health declines after her sons visit and discuss selling the property. Christine, the widow's niece and a liberation war veteran, arrives to care for her aunt and delivers a parcel of mealie meal from Tambudzai's mother, but Tambudzai refuses to collect it, fearing association with her impoverished homestead. Meanwhile, housemate Mako is sexually assaulted by another housemate, Shine. When Mako tells the others, fellow housemate Bertha dismisses the attack, and Tambudzai distances herself. Christine later reveals that Mai Manyanga is bleeding internally after one of her sons attacked her during a violent family brawl.

Tambudzai reflects on how her decline began at the Young Ladies' College of the Sacred Heart, a prestigious convent school. She obtains a biology teaching post at Northlea High School despite holding a sociology degree. She grows resentful of her "born free" students, young people born around the time of Independence whose confidence she finds alien. The students nickname her "Tambudzai the Grief." Her control snaps when she strikes Elizabeth Chinembiri, a meek student, with a T square. When the headmistress, Mrs. Samaita, touches her shoulder, Tambudzai hurls the T square at the chalkboard and howls. Days later, Elizabeth's mother visits and points an accusing finger. Tambudzai clamps her hand over the woman's mouth, then hears herself laughing like a hyena.

Part 2, "Suspended," opens with Tambudzai in a psychiatric ward, sedated and disoriented. She perceives the world as a purple pool patrolled by a hyena, the manifestation of her breakdown. Dr. Winton, a white psychiatrist, conducts sessions in which Tambudzai recounts fragments of her life but deflects deeper probing. In the dayroom, she is seated beside Widow Riley, now committed and confused, who mistakes Tambudzai for her daughter and repeatedly offers her a gold ring. The old woman's generosity gradually persuades Tambudzai that somewhere inside her exists a kernel of value.

Aunt Lucia, Tambudzai's mother's sister and a war veteran, visits along with Christine, and cousin Nyasha returns from Europe. At Nyasha's touch, Tambudzai begins to engage with the world again. Christine has traced the family through Tambudzai's niece Freedom; Lucia is paying treatment costs with Nyasha's help. As Nyasha visits regularly, Tambudzai improves, and it is decided she will live with her cousin after discharge.

Nyasha collects Tambudzai in a battered car. Tambudzai is dismayed by her cousin's poverty, which shatters her assumption that a European-educated woman must be prosperous. She meets Nyasha's German husband Leon and their children. Privately, she plots escape, viewing Nyasha's house as a stepping-stone, and throws the bag of mealie meal from her mother into the back of a closet. At the supermarket, she encounters Tracey Stevenson, her former classmate and boss at the Steers, D'Arcy and MacPedius advertising agency. They reconnect, and Tracey offers her a job at Green Jacaranda Getaway Safaris, an ecotourism start-up. On moving day, the household help Mai Taka is attacked by her husband Silence with a bicycle chain, causing her to miscarry. Tambudzai arranges her departure while Nyasha and Leon rush Mai Taka to the hospital. She leaves without thanking Nyasha, telling herself premature gratitude might attract envious spirits.

Part 3, "Arriving," begins with Tambudzai settling into a renovated bungalow provided by Green Jacaranda with a lease-to-own option. She manages bookings and analysis while Pedzi, the former receptionist from the advertising agency, develops a proposal for tours of Harare's high-density suburbs, branded the Green Jacaranda Ghetto Getaway. Tracey promotes Pedzi to project manager, and Tambudzai is consumed by jealousy.

Haunted by nightmares and hallucinations, Tambudzai writes to Mrs. Samaita requesting a meeting to apologize to Elizabeth Chinembiri. She visits the Chinembiri home, where Elizabeth's mother reveals that Elizabeth is permanently deaf in one ear and a year behind in school. The two women hold hands and weep. Elizabeth's elder brother warns that the family had planned retribution and hopes never to see Tambudzai again.

Tambudzai is promoted to tour supervisor, accompanying clients to the safari camp on the Stevenson family farm. Then war veterans invade the farm. Tracey proposes that Tambudzai establish a "Village Eco Transit" (VET) at her home village in the Eastern Highlands. Tambudzai drives to the homestead for the first time in years to find her mother shrunken and arthritic. Her mother greets her with pointed reproach but takes charge of the proposal, brokering the plan through the local Women's Club. She demands that Tracey help obtain a prosthetic leg for Netsai. Lucia and Christine warn Tambudzai that the project will expose her family to exploitation, but Tambudzai dismisses them. Tracey's Amsterdam partners demand "value addition": The village women must dance bare-breasted for "authenticity." Tambudzai does not tell her family.

On launch day, Tambudzai delivers the message about the women's torsos, which is met with angry outcry. Her mother takes control, leading the women out in Zambia cloths beneath colorful blouses. They dance to marimba music. Then her mother shrugs off her blouse and dashes it into the dust, signaling all the women to undress. When a German tourist raises his camera, Tambudzai's mother seizes it and hurls it into a mango tree, screaming that she will not be reduced to a picture of a naked old woman. Tambudzai collapses beside her mother, weeping, and whispers that everything will be made right.

Tambudzai walks away from the homestead and writes a letter of resignation, which Tracey accepts graciously. When her shame has healed enough, she visits Nyasha, who directs her to Aunt Lucia. Lucia, now wealthy from the success of AK Security, her own security company, gives Tambudzai menial tasks: delivering packages, sweeping floors, and brewing tea, while lecturing her on unhu, the quality of being human expected of a Sigauke woman. Over two years, Tambudzai rises from messenger to assistant general manager. Christine, also at AK Security, tells Tambudzai that her knowledge now resides not only in her head but in her body, including her heart. Tambudzai offers to help Christine with her studies, taking a first step toward sustaining knowledge in that deeper location.