Available Formats
The House of Hunger
By (Author) Dambudzo Marechera
Introduction by Peter Godwin
Penguin Books Ltd
Penguin Classics
15th July 2025
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Short stories
823
Paperback
128
Width 110mm, Height 180mm, Spine 9mm
82g
90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books 'The disenchanted, the disadvantaged and the disinherited seem, at times of deep crisis, to summon up some sort of genius that enables them to perceive and capture the appropriate weapons to carve out their destiny' Wielding his galvanising and idiosyncratic voice, this collection of electrifying and, at times, consoling speeches and essays from one of the 20th century's most inspiring and beloved Civil Rights leaders sharply examines life and history with an uplifting message of compassion.
Dambudzo Marechera was born in 1952 in Vengere, the township of Rusape, in the east of what was then Rhodesia. He was the third of nine children in a family which became destitute once his father was killed in a road accident in 1966. he gained a scholarship to study at New College, Oxford, where he was sent down in 1976 to live out his exile in Britain in a succession of squats for another six years. He hammered out the first draft of The House of Hunger on his portable typewriter in a matter of weeks. It won the Guardian First Novel Prize and was translated into six languages. Marechera died in 1987 after being diagnosed with AIDS.