Dambudzo Marechera – författare

In this dark and deeply radical novel, Dambudzo Marechera offers a visceral account of a photojournalist's entanglement with a terrorist organisation.In an unnamed totalitarian state, the members of Black Sunlight – a group of violent anarchists – are the only ones fighting for change and justice. As their actions push the country further towards chaos, journalist Christian records it all through the lens of his camera.Christian's life so far has been one of immense struggle and alienation. So when he becomes tangled in the Black Sunlight uprising, he is determined to remain a bystander and nothing more; to capture their actions without praise or condemnation.In evocative flashes of sex, violence, war, and myth, Christian's story explodes in a labyrinthine plot, told through a chaotic stream-of-consciousness that mirrors the nation's crumbling climate. Black Sunlight is a piercing insight into the darkness of the human psyche and a raw examination of a nation in battle against itself – where everything political turns deeply personal.'Complex, challenging – and uniquely potent.' Guardian 'A writer in constant quest for his real self.' Wole Soyinka.

'One of African literature's most fascinating and unorthodox figures' Brian Chikwava'When all else fails, don't take it in silence: scream like hell, scream like Jericho was tumbling down, serenaded by a brace of trombones, scream'Dambudzo Marechera burst onto the literary scene in 1978 with this vivid roar of a book exploring township life in pre-independence Zimbabwe. Rejecting what he saw as the narrow stereotypes of African literature, Marechera's stories portrayed a world flashing with violence and anarchic humour, as his narrator expresses his desperate alienation - from his family, from his student friends, from Zimbabwe itself.'A writer who considered fiction a "form of combat", complex, challenging - and uniquely potent' Guardian'Like overhearing a scream' Doris Lessing'A terrible beauty is born out of the urgency of his vision' Angela Carter

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books‘No, I don’t hate being black. I’m just tired of saying it’s beautiful. No, I don’t hate myself. I’m just tired of people bruising their knuckles on my jaw.’A novella with the force of a screaming trumpet flare, Dambudzo Marechera’s seminal literary debut explores a body and spirit exiled from the land and the self. An inimitable and internationally admired writer, his profound ambivalence and wry, existential sensibility was forged in this iconic book.

Marechera made an immediate impact with the publication of The House of Hunger. The novella and nine short stories, most of them set in Zimbabwe, symbolise both home and country as the 'house of hunger', the place of madness and violence and despair. Marechera describes a world in which tenderness has long given way to the tactics of survival, and he does so in a style at once explosive and loaded with angry humour.