The House of Hunger was originally published in by Heinemann in 1978. The book is a collection of harrowing, autobiographical short stories in which Marechera’s experiences both in his native Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and as a university student at Oxford, are channeled into a psychedelic cascade of blistering imagery and broken stream-of-consciousness narratives. In his own words, writing in English - his second language - rather than the Shona he grew up speaking, meant confronting the inherent racism of the language, “discarding grammar, throwing syntax out, subverting images within […] developing torture chambers of irony and sarcasm, gas ovens of limitless black resonance”.
Over the course of the episode, we discuss the violence and vibrancy of Marechera’s prose, consider his attitude to the newly independent Zimbabwe, and his torturous love affair with the English language.
Bibliography:
'African Doppelganger: Hybridity and Identity in the Work of Dambudzo Marechera' by David Buuck in Research in African Literatures, Vol. 28, No. 2, Autobiography and African Literature (Summer, 1997), pp. 118-131
'On Dambudzo Marechera: The Life and Times of an African Writer' by Helon Habila in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 82, No. 1, A Special Report: Aids in Africa (Winter 2006), pp. 251-260
‘Reveling in Genre: An Interview with China Miéville’ in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3, The British SF Boom (Nov., 2003), pp. 355-373
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The House of Hunger was originally published in by Heinemann in 1978. The book is a collection of harrowing, autobiographical short stories in which Marechera’s experiences both in his native Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and as a university student at Oxford, are channeled into a psychedelic cascade of blistering imagery and broken stream-of-consciousness narratives. In his own words, writing in English - his second language - rather than the Shona he grew up speaking, meant confronting the inherent racism of the language, “discarding grammar, throwing syntax out, subverting images within […] developing torture chambers of irony and sarcasm, gas ovens of limitless black resonance”.
Over the course of the episode, we discuss the violence and vibrancy of Marechera’s prose, consider his attitude to the newly independent Zimbabwe, and his torturous love affair with the English language.
Bibliography:
'African Doppelganger: Hybridity and Identity in the Work of Dambudzo Marechera' by David Buuck in Research in African Literatures, Vol. 28, No. 2, Autobiography and African Literature (Summer, 1997), pp. 118-131
'On Dambudzo Marechera: The Life and Times of an African Writer' by Helon Habila in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 82, No. 1, A Special Report: Aids in Africa (Winter 2006), pp. 251-260
‘Reveling in Genre: An Interview with China Miéville’ in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3, The British SF Boom (Nov., 2003), pp. 355-373
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope MIrrlees was originally published in 1926. Lud-in-the-Mist is the capital of the fictional free state of Dorimare, a country which shares a border with Fairyland, just across The Debatable Hills. Centuries ago, under the rule of Duke Aubrey, Fairy things had been part of life and culture in Dorimare. After a violent revolution, a new merchant class took over the country. Duke Aubrey was expelled and all mention of Fairies and Fairy lore became taboo. The smuggling of hallucination-inducing fairy fruit into Dorimare continues, however, behind closed doors. When Nathaniel Chanticleer, the Mayor of Lud-in-the-Mist finds that his son has ingested some of this heinous fruit, the old ways, the traditions and romance of the Fairies can no longer be ignored.
Over the course of the episode, we discuss the methods Mirrlees’ novel has in common with Modernist practice, the various allegorical interpretations that offer themselves throughout the text, and the emergent class politics suggested by her discussion of the fairy folk.
Bibliography:
Attebury, Brian, ‘“Make it Old”: The Other Mythic Method’ in The Mirror of the Past, ed. Bogdan Trocha, Aleksander Rzyman, Tomasz Ratajczak (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014)
Mirrlees, Hope, Collected Poems, ed. Sandeep Parmar, (Fyfield Books, 2011)
Sherds Podcast
The House of Hunger was originally published in by Heinemann in 1978. The book is a collection of harrowing, autobiographical short stories in which Marechera’s experiences both in his native Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and as a university student at Oxford, are channeled into a psychedelic cascade of blistering imagery and broken stream-of-consciousness narratives. In his own words, writing in English - his second language - rather than the Shona he grew up speaking, meant confronting the inherent racism of the language, “discarding grammar, throwing syntax out, subverting images within […] developing torture chambers of irony and sarcasm, gas ovens of limitless black resonance”.
Over the course of the episode, we discuss the violence and vibrancy of Marechera’s prose, consider his attitude to the newly independent Zimbabwe, and his torturous love affair with the English language.
Bibliography:
'African Doppelganger: Hybridity and Identity in the Work of Dambudzo Marechera' by David Buuck in Research in African Literatures, Vol. 28, No. 2, Autobiography and African Literature (Summer, 1997), pp. 118-131
'On Dambudzo Marechera: The Life and Times of an African Writer' by Helon Habila in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 82, No. 1, A Special Report: Aids in Africa (Winter 2006), pp. 251-260
‘Reveling in Genre: An Interview with China Miéville’ in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3, The British SF Boom (Nov., 2003), pp. 355-373
