The House of Hunger

Dambudzo Marechera

 

Synopsis

This explosive, award-winning novella of growing up in colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), told in exquisite, imaginative prose, touches the reader's nerve through the author's harrowing portrait of lives disrupted by white settlers, a young disillusioned black man, and individual suffering in the 1960s and 1970s. Marechera's raw, piercing writings secured his place in African literature as a stylistic innovator and rebel commentator of the ghetto condition.

Review

The book is an explosion. Writer and book are both of the nature of miracles. Hard for anyone to become a writer, but to do against such handicaps? It is no good pretending this book is an easy or pleasant read. More like overhearing a scream. - Doris Lessing

Author

Dambudzo Marechera was a Zimbabwean novelist and poet. His short career produced a book of stories, two novels, a book of plays, prose, and poetry, and a collection of poetry. He died in 1987.