If you read about the Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga lately, it was rarely about her novels, but mostly about the fact that the author has been on trial in her home country for two years and has had to appear there a good thirty times to date.

Dangarembga, who was born in Mukuto in 1959, protested peacefully with co-defendant Julie Barnes and simply called for “a better Zimbabwe” on a poster.

That was enough for an indictment.

A verdict has now been reached in this never-ending process, which may have involved nothing more than intimidating and weakening government critics like Dangarembga and Barnes.

The author, who was accused by the public prosecutor of incitement to violence, breach of the peace and bigotry,

was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to a six-month suspended prison sentence.

In addition, Tsitsi Dangarembga has to pay 70,000 Zimbabwe dollars, which is around 200 euros.

Anna Vollmer

Editor in the “Germany and the World” department.

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It is an unjustified and bitter verdict, also because it proves how close Dangarembga's books, which, like her novel "Verleugnung", which has now been published in German, often deal with discrimination and arbitrariness, are to reality.

It just didn't need that proof.

Because Dangarembga has long been famous and awarded for her close look.

In 2018, when the BBC asked 108 critics and writers what they thought were the world's most influential stories, they voted Dangarembga's 'Breaking Out' 66th (homer's 'Odyssey' came first).

Shortly before her indictment in 2020, Dangarembga's novel Survival was nominated for the Booker Prize, and a year later she received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.

The attention that came with all these prizes is fortunate in two respects: For the writer, who is now also famous in Germany, and who depends on donations to cover the high legal fees of the long process.

And for her German readers, who can now (partly: again) read the author's novels in translation after a long time.

The missing part of the trilogy appears in German

After the first and third parts of Dangarembga's trilogy about the protagonist Tambudzai Sigauke, who is trying to work her way up from a humble background in Zimbabwe, have already been published by Orlanda Verlag, the missing second part is now also being published in German with "Verleugnen".

He describes Tambu's school years at the elite convent school "Young Ladies' College of the Sacred Heart", which is mainly attended by white people, and her first steps in the professional world.

The Tambus story begins in the late 1970s.

Civil war was raging in Zimbabwe, which was then called Rhodesia.

Black guerrillas fight against the white government and its colonial rule.

With success: in 1980 Robert Mugabe was elected President and Zimbabwe finally became independent from Great Britain.

There is a moment of optimism in the country - but the situation of a young black woman like Tambu, the short form of Tambudzai, changes little.

Their everyday life is characterized by racism and exclusion, the political situation has drawn a rift through the family: Tambu's uncle, who sends his niece to a school full of European women, is considered a traitor to his compatriots and family, who, like Tambu's sister, are against the whites fights