TSITSI Dangarembga (TD) is one of Zimbabwe’s most internationally recognised writers and her latest novel, This Mournable Body — a sequel to her 1988 novel Nervous Conditions — was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker prize. Her arrest on July 31 last year for protesting high-level government corruption, triggered an international outcry. Despite her long history of activism, Dangarembga (61) says she is not political activist, but simply wants the best for her country. She speaks to NewsDay Weekender (NW)’s Beauty Nyuke…. NW: Who is Tsitsi Dangarembga? TD: Tsitsi Dangarembga is a novelist, a filmmaker, a person who advocates for the role of culture and creative artistic narrative production in society, in that nature I am the director of the institutive creative arts for progress in Africa. NW: What inspired you to become an author? TD: I became an author because I enjoyed telling stories, I enjoyed  language, I enjoyed inhabiting spaces of imagination and bringing something else into being that did not exist before hand. NW: What is your memorable experience throughout your journey as an author? TD: My memorable moment has been completing the Tambudzai trilogy a journal of African Cultural Studies which is intended to tell the history of Zimbabwe through the eyes of the central character, Tambudzai. There is interlinking between characters in the novel and Zimbabwean characters as a country. NW: What can you say is the greatest achievement in your life? TD: I have many achievements, sometimes the very fact that I get up in the morning and do the work that I needed to do in the face of challenges as a Zimbabwean creative living in Zimbabwe is an achievement for me, making this whole thing heroic is something I do not want to participate in. NW: Do you have any project which you are currently working on right now? TD: I am working on young and disturbing fiction called the Saisai and Great Ancestor of Fire which is about the women who were called by their ancestors to change the world. NW: Would you mind sharing with us your experience as a human rights defender. TD: I am not a human rights defender. I am simply a citizen who believes that human beings deserve a meaningful life. When we are talking about human rights defenders, we are talking about people who make a carrier out of advocating for human rights and earn a living through that. I do not earn a living through advocating for human rights, but I earn a living through my creative engagement.  In fact, this is what I would like to become more of. Those of us who are creative in the spaces of bringing attention to the human condition engage with the issues that are called human rights which is the way we live and the way we treat each other in a way that engages other human beings. NW: You have written several books which has received awesome reception in Zimbabwe and even outside, which one can you say is your best piece and why? TD: I do not judge my books as the best piece or not my best piece because I have a belief that  this is not how creatives work to judge