Dambudzo Marechera

Charles William Dambudzo Marechera was born on June 4, 1952, in Vengere township, Rusape. Expelled from the University of Rhodesia for anti-colonial protests, he won a scholarship to New College, Oxford, where his rebellious non-conformity led to his expulsion.

Living as a bohemian writer in London, Marechera published The House of Hunger (1978), a collection of explosive, hallucinatory novellas capturing the psychological trauma of Rhodesian township poverty. The book shared the prestigious Guardian Fiction Prize with Neil Jordan. Returning to independent Zimbabwe in 1982, he refused government patronage, living as a homeless squatter in Harare and writing searing poetry (Mindblast, Cemetery of Mind) until his death in 1987.