Scrapiron Blues (African Writers Library)

Literature & Fiction

Veit-Wild, Flora

Marechera, Dambudzo

United States

Africa World Pr

This is a book of poems by Dambudzo Marechera, representing the whole spectrum of the young writer's growing literary maturity. The poems sparkle with Marechera's unique wit, always quickened by his uncanny ability to use language to subvert all conventional cultural and political pieties.  "Cemetery of Mind" demands serious attention and reveals, through the sharpest of the poet's voice, the real world inside us all.

Cemetery of Mind (African Writers Library)

Poetry

This is a book of poems by Dambudzo Marechera, representing the whole spectrum of the young writer's growing literary maturity. The poems sparkle with Marechera's unique wit, always quickened by his uncanny ability to use language to subvert all conventional cultural and political pieties. "Cemetery of Mind" demands serious attention and reveals, through the sharpest of the poet's voice, the real world inside us all.

History & Criticism

Outcasts inside a ruined and deserted faculty building tell of their experiences in the post-colonial disaster zone. The story reflects the writer's experience of migrancy, and his refusal of the security of belonging - either to an African identity or to the international literary elite.

The Black Insider (African Writers Library)

Outcasts inside a ruined and deserted faculty building tell of their experiences in the post-colonial disaster zone. The story reflects the writer's experience of migrancy, and his refusal of the security of belonging - either to an "African identity" or to the international literary elite.

Literary

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wide-ranging collection of personal interviews, memoirs by friends and fellow writers like Nadine Gordimer, previously unpublished manuscripts, photographs and memorabilia she explores the man and the myth.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 Marechera’s 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. The final chapter draws on obituaries and tributes to assess his role in contemporary Zimbabwe. The reader is left with a contradictory, haunting image of a writer whose explosive creativity was equaled only by his urge for self-destruction.  This is not only the most comprehensive study of Marechera yet published, but an eloquent biography of a whole generation: those Zimbabweans who grew up under the Smith regime, experienced the loneliness of exile, and returned to taste the bitter fruits of independence. The book, with its extensive bibliography and array of previously inaccessible primary and secondary sources, is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in contemporary African literature.

New World Hegemony in the Malay World

Compelling memoir of Flora Veit-Wild and her relationship with the Zimbabwean novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist Dambudzo Marechera, one of Africa's most innovative and subversive writers and a significant voice in contemporary world literature.\nHow shall I tell our story? I hear your voice ringing in mine. I struggle to disentangle a dense tapestry of memories. One thread will be caught up in another. Early images will embrace later ones. My gaze will often be filtered through your eyes, your poems. In the end I will not always be able to tell the original from the reflection. Just as you wrote, Time's fingers on the piano / play emotion into motion / the dancers in the looking glass never recognise us as their originals. 
This book is a memoir with a 'double heartbeat'. At its centre is the author's relationship with the late Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo Marechera, whose award-winning book The House of Hunger marked him as a powerful, disruptive, perhaps prophetic voice in African literature. Flora Veit-Wild is internationally recognised for her significant contribution to preserving Marechera's legacy. What is less known about Marechera and Veit-Wild is that they had an intense, personal and sexual relationship. This memoir explores this: the couple's first encounter in 1983, amidst the euphoria of the newly independent Zimbabwe; the tumultuous months when the homeless writer moved in with his lover and her family; the bouts of creativity once he had his own flat followed by feelings of abandonment; the increasing despair about a love affair that could not stand up against reality; and the illness of the writer and his death of HIV related pneumonia in August 1987. What follows are the struggles Flora went through once Dambudzo had died. On the one hand she became the custodian of his life and work, on the other she had to live with her own HIV infection and the ensuing threats to her health.\nJacana: Southern Africa

They Called You Dambudzo: A Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

James Currey

Teachers, Preachers, Non-Believers: A Social History of Zimbabwean Literature (New Perspectives on African Literature, 6)

Hans Zell Pub

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Veit-Wild, Flora. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Veit-Wild, Flora

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Veit-Wild, Flora. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Scrapiron Blues (African Writers Library)

Cemetery of Mind (African Writers Library)

Cemetery of Mind (African Writers Library)

The Black Insider (African Writers Library)

The Black Insider (African Writers Library)

New World Hegemony in the Malay World

They Called You Dambudzo: A Memoir

They Called You Dambudzo: A Memoir

Teachers, Preachers, Non-Believers: A Social History of Zimbabwean Literature (New Perspectives on African Literature, 6)