Harare Review of Books

61 pages.

First published on Nov 30, 2019.

Genre: Non-fiction.

This will need to stand in for a review of Marechera’s House of Hunger, which I will never be able to review. Only half-kidding. Earlier in the year, the Harare Book Club discussed House of Hunger, and all I could think was how Marechera was deliberately baffling, and how everyone sees something different in his writing.

Nevertheless. Tinashe Mushakavanhu is (who I consider to be) the pre-eminent scholar anywhere on Marechera. This little book tells how he first encountered—and fell in love with (my words, not his)—Marechera’s writing. It details Marechera’s life, his death and funeral, his politics, his archive, his writing style, the meaning of his work to Zimbabwe and to Zimbabweans, and provides a few small extracts of his work. At the end, there are letters written to the Dambudzo Marechera Trust by his fans after his death, which I really enjoyed, and then correspondence with various literary luminaries who were influenced or inspired by Marechera (including China Mieville, which I found fascinating!).

That’s a lot to manage in 61 pages, but Mushakavanhu does. Reincarnating is illuminating, and has been added to my reference library.

Side note: I lived quite near the flat where Marechera’s sister died, and so one day I walked down to see if it looked—well, like anything. It looked very ordinary. History is fascinating like that.