The Book of NOT

The Book of Not
Tsitsi Dangarembga
Ayebia Press Ltd.
£9.99 (paperback)

The Book of Not opens in a newly formless world, where guerrillas battle to overthrow colonialism. And Tambu, now sixteen, is once again a witness to the sufferings of someone close to her, when her younger sister Netsai, loses a limb in the aftermath of a guerrilla bomb. Tambu's story becomes a series of "nots"; she can only bow her head " to summon the peace that comes with not seeing". A student at a school "peopled not by those who looked like us but by Europeans", she learns other withdrawals; in class, she closes her eyes against the image of her damaged sister. The convent school is the site of her personal rebellion against the realities of the war being fought over her "nascent Zimbabwean soul". It is also where Tambu tries to dismantle a system that places all black students, regardless of age and academic accomplishment, in the same substandard dormitory.

The book's portrayal of the black schoolgirls and the way their conflicting loyalties and aspirations make them turn on each other is honest and compelling.

The second novel in a trilogy, The Book of Not promises a conclusion for Tambu and her cousin that refuses to enact the usual fall of women who confound their environment and find themselves in turn confounded.

Helen Oyeyemi, TLS