DAMBUDZO MARECHERA: A SOURCE BOOK ON HIS LIFE AND WORK
Years after his death, Dambudzo Marechera is still one of the most exciting and subversive writers Africa has produced. A cult hero for young Zimbabweans and a thorn in the flesh of officialdom, Marechera continues to inspire and disturb. In this documentary reader, Flora Veit-Wild offers a multi-faceted portrait of a man whose life was as tortured as his fiction. Through a wide-ranging collection of personal interviews, memoirs by friends and fellow writers like Nadine Gordimer, previously unpublished manuscripts, photographs and memorabilia she explores the man and the myth. The book resounds with Marecheras own voice. It begins with a fascinating interview in which, with characteristic wit and honesty, he discusses his background and work. Subsequent chapters chronicle the major periods of his life: a poverty stricken childhood in Rhodesia, involvement in student unrest and expulsion from university, his return to Zimbabwe as a prophetic but rejected critic of post-colonial society