Dambudzo Marechera, a Zimbabwean novelist, short story writer, playwright and poet won critical acclaim for his collection of stories entitled “The House of Hunger“.

“The House of Hunger,” a powerful account of life in his country under white rule published in 1978, was number 207 in Heinemann’s African Writers Series and was awarded the 1979 Guardian Fiction prize.

Born on June 4, 1952, in Vhengere Township, Rusape, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), to Isaac Marechera, a mortuary attendant, and Masvotwa Venenzia Marechera, a maid, Marechera has been described as a writer who considered fiction a ‘form of combat’, his work is complex, challenging and uniquely potent.

He lived on the streets in dire poverty, mostly drunk, sleeping in friends’ sitting-rooms and writing various fictional and poetic pieces on park benches and regularly getting caught by the police for vagrancy.

Marechera returned to Zimbabwe in 1981 to assist in shooting the film of House of Hunger.