Short stories · A way to begin
The House of Hunger
Dambudzo Marechera · 1978
Synopsis
“I picked up my things and left”: the narrator, a young man from the township who leaves the house of hunger, looks back on his childhood and adolescence in the Rhodesia of Ian Smith, amid poverty, domestic violence, drunkenness and racism. As a student, he feels a stranger to his family, to his fellow students and to the society around him. This long first-person narrative, some eighty pages in length, is followed by nine short stories, a few of which speak of the exile of an African in England.
Context
The book appeared in London in 1978 from Heinemann, in the African Writers series (no. 207), where James Currey had taken it on. Its author wrote it in England, after his expulsion from Oxford; the text proceeds by collage, in a jolting stream of consciousness that left its mark on African literature in English. It was translated into French in 1999 by Jean-Baptiste Évette and Xavier Garnier, then again in 2023 by Sika Fakambi, and taken up in 2022 among Penguin's modern classics.
Who it is for
In English, one long narrative and nine short stories, fragmented, raw and violent; a demanding read, which cannot be followed like a plot.
Prizes and reception
Guardian Fiction Prize in 1979, shared with Neil Jordan; its author was the first African to receive it. Doris Lessing said that reading it was like hearing a cry.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.