Dambudzo Marechera (1952-1987) was a Zimbabwean novelist, poet, and short story writer. The House of Hunger, published two years before Zimbabwe gained independence, is a collection of short stories that drift between memories, violence, politics, and psychic fragmentation. It won the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1979 and remains a classic of African literature.
Marechera's writing is combative and brutal, driven by a contempt for authority that he had no interest in concealing. It is boldly political. He was fearless. This fearlessness is shown in his writing, and through the stories he chooses to tell. Though he lived a troubled life, and died a terrible death, Marechera was a man who stood firm in his beliefs and The House of Hunger shows this – it shows a writer with an uncontainable spirit whose words were an act of defiance.
In The House of Hunger, Marechera writes of life under violent oppression. “Arrests became so much a part of one's food that no one even turned a hair when two guerrillas were executed one morning and their bodies later displayed to a group of schoolchildren.” He writes of geurillas and resistance often, forcing us to bear witness to the oppresive regime he lived under.
He writes of self-hatred, and fear. Fear of change, acceptance. In “Black Skin What Mask,” he writes of his skin “It is like a silent friend: moody, assertive, possessive, callous – sometimes” and later goes on to say “I had such a friend once” – a friend who turns out to be a character that takes his life.
He writes of internal discomfort – “This eternal gnawing in the gut. Racking, always, one’s brain in the doorway.”
Reading these stories is a turbulent journey through highly intense experiences. The stories are disorienting, and aggressive, and yet refreshing and honest. Each story records more than the chosen narrative; it take us into the psyche of its characters, and holds up a mirror in which readers are forced to see themselves and the structures around them.
Marechera belongs alongside writers like K. Sello Duiker and Ayi Kwei Armah: authors whose work demands that you release the part of yourself that needs comfort and safety. Writing like this is necessary. Stories like the ones told in The House of Hunger are necessary – necessary for change and transformation, internal and external.
