“Dambudzo Marechera is an outsider”, wrote a critic in 1987, shortly after the Zimbabwean writer’s death at 35, and many of his readers would agree. In the 1970s, in the context of his native Rhodesia, his writing – poems, a novella (The House of Hunger) and some short stories – was in stark contrast to all the literary traditions the country had produced in the previous decades. Their opposition to the texts written in English by white settler writers (with their curious mixture of entertainment and white nationalist propaganda) and to the moralistic texts in indigenous languages whose thematic range was strictly controlled, may have been deemed “natural”. But Marechera’s texts were also, u

This article in full comprises 1698 words but only the first 150 or so words are available to non-members.

All our articles have been written recently by experts in their field, more than 95% of them university professors. To read about membership, please click here.

First published 20 January 2005

Citation: Primorac, Ranka. "Dambudzo Marachera". The Literary Encyclopedia. 20 January 2005.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2928, accessed 9 February 2010.]