Tsitsi Dangarembga Tsitsi Dangarembga ( b. 1959 ) is a Zimbabwean author and filmmaker . Biography The writer was born in Mutoko , Zimbabwe ( then Rhodesia ) in 1959 . She spent part of her childhood in England , beginning her education there but concluding her A-levels in a missionary school in her home country , in the town of Mutare . She later studied medicine at Cambridge University , but became homesick and returned home as black-majority rule began in 1980 . She started to study psychology at the University of Zimbabwe , as well as holding a job as a copywriter at a marketing agency for two years and being a member of the university drama group . This early writing gave her an avenue for expression , and she wrote many plays , such as The Lost of the Soil . She then joined the theater group Zambuko , and participated in the production of two plays , Katshaa and Mavambo . In 1985 Dangerembga published a short story in Sweden called `` The Letter '' . In 1987 , she also published the play She Does Not Weep in Harare . At the age of twenty-five , she had her first taste of success with the novel Nervous Conditions . It was the first to be published by a black Zimbabwean woman . It won the African section of the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1989 . She continued her education later in Berlin at the Deutsche Film und Fernseh Akademie , studying film direction . She made many film productions , including a documentary for German television . She also made the film Everyone 's Child , shown worldwide including at the Dublin Film Festival . Works As a novelist Dangarembga made her debut with Nervous Conditions , a partially autobiographical work which appeared in Great Britain in 1988 and the next year in the United States . A sequel , The Book of Not , was published in 2006 . Dangerembga wrote the story for the film Neria ( 1993 ) , which became the highest-grossing film in Zimbabwean history . The protagonist is a widowed woman , whose brother-in-law abuses traditional customs to control her assets for his own benefit . Neria loses her material possessions and her child , but gets then help from her female friend ( played by Kubi Indi ) against her late husband 's family . The title song is by Oliver Mtukudzi , who also appears in the film . In 1996 she directed the film Everyone 's Child . It was the first feature film directed by a black Zimbabwean woman . The story followed the tragic fates of four siblings , after their parents die of AIDS . The soundtrack featured songs by Zimbabwe 's most popular musicians , including Thomas Mapfumo , Leonard Zhakata and Andy Brown . External links http : //www.postcolonialweb.org/zimbabwe/td/dangarembgaov.html http : //www.kirjasto.sci.fi/tsitsi.htm Tsitsi Dangarembga at the Internet Movie Database Categories : Zimbabwean writers | 1959 births | Living people | Zimbabwean film directors | Theatre in Zimbabwe In other languages : Deutsch | Galego 0199483 Tsitsi Dangarembga 