Dambudzo Marechera, Black Sunlight

Shun Man Emily Chow (University of Hong Kong); Grant Hamilton (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
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Black Sunlight

(1980) is the second major prose work of the Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera. Published two years after his highly acclaimed award-winning debut novella

The House of Hunger

(1978),

Black Sunlight

courted far less critical attention than its predecessor. An experimental text considered by many early readers to be “unreadable and overdrawn” (Veit-Wild, “Words as Bullets” 116), the novel takes as its main focus the inadequacy of essentialist notions of racial and national identity. Read in the context of a critique of the demands made by radical oppositional politics,

Black Sunlight

reveals the immanent shortfalls of the “revolutionary” agenda of Zimbabwe’s anti-colonial struggle. It is perhaps for this reason, and not those of “obscenity and blasphemy”…

1720 words

Citation: Chow, Shun Man Emily, Grant Hamilton. "Black Sunlight". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 March 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=28557, accessed 19 March 2024.]

28557 Black Sunlight 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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