Hisham Matar referentes Marechera’s book in My Friends, which is how I came to it. The author died young, after what would appear to have been a turbulent life. The House of Hunger has the feel of a semi-autobiographical novel, relating a ferocious youth in Harare whilst still under the imperial rule of Ian Smith, when the country now known as Zimbabwe was called Rhodesia. It’s a rumbustious book, full of protest, violence, sex and melodrama. A heightened narrative with echoes of Lautréamont and Bataille. Living in a police state, the narrator navigates a path between his shanty town family and a more literary interracial scene he becomes part of as he heads out of adolescence. Timelines crackle and pop, storylines blend into one another. Characters come and go. It’s a visceral read which distils the energy of this fucked-up colonised world. The book is split into two parts. The first half is a mazy romp through youth and Harare, the second switches to Oxford and England, where Marechera spent eight years after going to the university on a scholarship. This second half is split into small chapters, which flit backwards and forwards from the UK to Zimbabwe, and lend one of the chapter headings the title: Fear and Loathing in Harare. The echoes couldn’t be clearer. It’s a great, percussive read which communicates the energy of the world it depicts, a chaotic, brutal energy, steeped in sex, alcohol, racial tension and suspicion.
