Dambudzo Marechera

Who is Dambudzo Marechera?

Dambudzo Marechera was a Zimbabwean writer whose fierce, experimental prose made him one of the most distinctive voices in African literature. Born in Vengere township near Rusape in colonial Rhodesia, he studied at the University of Rhodesia before being expelled for his involvement in student protests, and later won a scholarship to New College, Oxford, from which he was also expelled after a turbulent period marked by conflict with authorities and periods of homelessness. His debut work, the story collection The House of Hunger (1978), depicted the psychological damage of township life and colonial oppression in raw, surreal, and formally daring prose, and won the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1979, bringing him international recognition. He went on to publish the novel Black Sunlight and further poetry and fiction, refusing to soften his uncompromising, often anti-establishment style even after returning to newly independent Zimbabwe. He died in Harare in 1987 at the age of 35 from an AIDS-related illness, and has since become a widely studied, posthumously celebrated figure in African letters.

Sources: Dambudzo Marechera, The House of Hunger (Heinemann African Writers Series, 1978) · Flora Veit-Wild, Dambudzo Marechera: A Source Book on His Life and Work (Hans Zell, 1992)