Dambudzo Marechera was born in 1952 in what was known as Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe), where he died from pneumonia after being diagnosed with AIDS. His father passed away early on, which led the large family to poverty. His mother, who had worked as a housemaid, became a prostitute and was forced to live in a ghetto with her children, surrounded by violence. In light of this situation, Marechera´s childhood was marked forever, causing him to stutter.

Despite his troubles, Marechera proved to be exceptionally intelligent and independent. In 1972, he enrolled at the University of Rhodesia with a scholarship to study English Literature. He quickly became a political activist, and was even expelled for protesting against the government on campus. Following the recommendations of his teachers, he continued his education at New College, Oxford University, which he was forced to abandon in 1976 after attempting to set fire to the centre and refusing psychiatric treatment for his anti-social behaviour. He then moved to London, where he began to work as a writer with The House of Hunger.

Published in 1978, his first literary work was a collection of autobiographical stories that described the internal life of characters that lived in a black neighbourhood similar to the one in which the author grew up. The book generated a great deal of interest in the literary world, especially because it represented a change in Africa´s fiction: it broke away from the realist treatment of the typical political and social issues of anti-colonial protest novels in favour of a deeply internal portrait.

His next work, Black Sunlight, was published in 1980, the same year that Zimbabwe declared its independence. Throughout this book, he establishes a parallelism between his country´s political transformation and Marechera´s own transformation. When he returned to Zimbabwe in 1982, after spending eight years in exile, he suffered stages of alcoholism and mental diseases, roaming to and from the homes of his friends like a vagabond.

Although Marechera was initially acclaimed as a new and surprising talent by important authors like Doris Lessing, others have lamented his nihilistic vision of Africa, accusing him of undermining the hope of his own nation.

Sources:

• Wikipedia

• www.kirjasto.sci.fi

• www.marecheracelebration.org