Dangarembga wins PEN Pinter prize for holding ‘magnifying glass’ to Zim

Zimbabwean author, playwright and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga, who was arrested last year for taking part in antigovernment protests, has won the PEN Pinter Prize 2021 after judges described her work as a “magnifying glass to the struggles of ordinary people”.

Dangarembga now joins the ranks of Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood and Jamaican poet and activist Linton Kwesi Johnson, who have all won the award.

“I am delighted that my literary work continues to have impact. In today’s troubled world, I hope that impact is towards peace and ways of living well together,” Dangarembga told Sunday Times Daily on Tuesday.

The PEN Pinter Prize, named after Nobel laureate playwright Harold Pinter, pays tribute to writers who, in Pinter’s words, show a “fierce intellectual determination ... to define the real truth of our lives and our societies”. The winner must be the author of a “significant body of plays, poetry, essays, or fiction of outstanding literary merit, written in English”, according to englishpen.org.

The judges said Dangarembga’s work had “charted the development of Zimbabwe from a British colony to an autocratic and troubled free state. In doing so, she has held a magnifying glass to the struggles of ordinary people, in so many parts of the world, to lead good lives in the increasingly corrupt and fractured new world order. Hers is a voice we all need to hear and heed.”

I’m inspired by the world around me, the inconsistencies and imbalances, the emptinesses and attempts at filling the void, the desire to be more than what we are and the fear of that change and, at the same time, the fear of who we are.

—  Tsitsi Dangarembga

Dangarembga is the author of Nervous Conditions, which she wrote when she was 25. Nervous Conditions won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and has been “hailed as one of the 20th century’s most significant works of African literature”. It was followed by The Book of Not and the Man Booker-shortlisted This Mournable Body, the third part of the trilogy.

Dangarembga is also a filmmaker, playwright and activist who was arrested last year in Harare while protesting against corruption.

Last year, after her arrest for taking part in protests against President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s rule, she described Zimbabwe’s future as “rather bleak”.

The trial has been delayed repeatedly. PEN has been calling since August 2020 for all charges against Dangarembga to be dropped.

“Whether we weather this storm to turn the nation around or not will depend on the calibre of Zimbabwean citizens and our ability to face up to crisis,” Dangarembga said.

On her writing, she said: “I’m inspired by the world around me, the inconsistencies and imbalances, the emptinesses and attempts at filling the void, the desire to be more than what we are and the fear of that change and, at the same time, the fear of who we are.”

Dangarembga will deliver a keynote speech at a ceremony hosted by British Library and English PEN on October 11, when she will announce the co-winner of her prize with an International Writer of Courage, who is “active in defence of freedom of expression, often at great risk to their own safety and liberty”. The co-winner will be selected by Dangarembga from a shortlist of international cases supported by English PEN.