I am going to talk about both novels, Nervous Conditions and Season of Migration to the North, together because of their general common theme of postcolonial living and its effect on the colonised or previously colonised. Both novels were such an experience to read, as you get involved with the characters you fall to pieces with the outcome of the endings, due to colonialism. To further explain this, the basic idea you get when reading this, is the utter psychological and traumatising metamorphoses the characters go through as they learn what demeaning life they lead within a community that underwent colonialism. To begin with, Nervous Conditions will tear you apart. It is a brilliant read and absolutely wonderful. The way Tsitsi Dangarembga embodies the horror of colonial living in her characters is purely artistic. The story begins with our protagonist, sixteen-then-thirteen year old Tambu, expressing her complete callousness of her brother's death, a very feminist statement. The book is a very feminist discourse as well, which is actually due to exposure to the western world but don't let me get ahead of myself. The story revolves around two girls, Tambu and Nyasha, two cousins from two different worlds. Tambu has lived in a rural village in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, while Nyasha has lived in London most of her life. Moreover, all Tambu wanted was to go to school, to which her father responds "are you going to cook books for your husband?" and so refuses to pay for her tuition. She decides to plant her own corn, sell it and pay for herself. Meanwhile, her elder brother is going to school and is adopted by their uncle, Babamukuru, who pays for his education for about three years till his death. Babamukuru has studied at missionary schools and works at them and has just returned from completing his masters and business trip from London. He took his wife and two kids, Nyasha and Chido. So Nyasha and her brother have had a "western" upbringing and grew up with European standards. They dress, walk, talk and act like them.
At the beginning of the story, Tambu appears to be quite the headstrong, willing character, up until she gets the chance to be adopted by her uncle and receives the education she wanted. She moves in with them and starts to see just how much compromise there has to be done to be accepted in western eyes. She becomes very submissive to her uncle who starts to appear like a godsend and completely acts like that too. Nyasha seems to be a very out of her place, and she definitely knows it. Since the first day they got back to Rhodesia she feels very uncomfortable, which is mistaken for arrogance. Tambu finds her to be quite the character; answering back her parents, doing whatever pleases her, dressing however she likes and staying out with boys. Very unlike the girls then in the sixties of Rhodesia. Her own mother even says her kids have been "Anglicized". Tambu notices though, as she shared a bedroom with her, just how much Nyasha is weak, or weakened I should say. With every page turned, another layer of Nyasha is revealed till she finally collapses. All the pain of being secluded in a European culture and then the seclusion in her family's culture played mind tricks on her. She feels she does not belong anywhere. The horror of this tears her apart and Tambu realises that this is resulted from the English education, this sharp wittiness makes her a lot more self aware and not establish herself to a western culture.
On the other hand, Tayib Saleh's Season of Migration to the North, takes this psychological trauma to the next level. This is mainly set in the thirties in Sudan when an unnamed narrative returns home from completing his masters in London. He meets a new addition to the village, Mustafa Sa'eed, who he later learns has also studied abroad in London. After the narrator sits down to learn about his history, we learn that Mustafa Sa'eed actually takes action to do something about how the western world takes advantage of the colonised. After being sent to a school in London and completing his higher education all the way up to a PhD, he commences his battle. He feels obliged to take matter into his hands and seek revenge for his people. He looks at it this way, the English raped his land, so he shall rape England or the English. He paints this picture of himself as the black god to all those girls with a fetish. He lures them into his exotic cave and puts them under his spell.
Once the girls realise that they've let a black man control them and not the other way round, considering the white man liked to be the one in charge, they commit suicide. Until Sa'eed meets a girl he later marries named Jean Morris who forces him to see that he can never take her or be above her. She continuously tries to remind him that even though he is an intellectual who dresses very classy in suits and all and has a very eloquent grasp of the English language, he will forever be the primitive savage from Sudan. In the theory of postcolonialism, the west always wants to be obeyed and not the other way round, it can never be the other way round.
Season of Migration to the North is actually translated from Arabic and has been banned for a very long while. It does a very excellent job in revealing the mentally tormenting consequences of having your identity snatched away from you or reduced to a particular mould. Even the cover of the book tells you a million things; the shattered vase can never look the way it was prior, it will always have the scarring remarks of torment.
Both this works of art were absolutely brilliant! They kept me on the edge the whole time and I think I now favour the postcolonial subgenre in novels. I never did but now I do!
Thank you so much for reading this far and happy reading :)
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