Emerging Perspectives on Dambudzo Marechera

Anthony Chennells & Flora Veit-Wild

 

Synopsis

The Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo Marechera, was regarded by some as mad and by others as a genius. Today, ten years after his death, his international reputation continues to grow not only as one fo the most innovative writers Africa has produced but as an important voice in the twentieth-century literature. This new book is the first collection of critical essays devoted entirely to Marechera. Flora Veit-Wild and Anthony Chennells have brought together the work of scholars from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Italy, Nigeria, Germany and England to show the complexity and variety of responses which Marechera's writing evokes.

Review

A profound, even if exaggeratedly self-aware writer... Marechera was... in constant quest for his real self, quarrying towards a core that he once wryly expressed in the cry: My whole life has been an attempt to make myself the skeleton in my own cupboard. - Wole Soyinka

Authors

Prof Anthony Chennells teaches English at Arrupe College in Harare, Zimbabwe. He taught at the University of Zimbabwe for many years.

Flora Veit-Wild is Professor of African Literatures and Cultures at Humboldt University, Berlin.