The House of Hunger: A Novella & Short Stories

New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. First U.S. Edition. 167 pages; 22 cm. Fine in fine(-) jacket, with a tiny closed tear to bottom rear edge. . Hardcover. ISBN: 0394508327; 9780394508320

The book pairs a title novella with nine shorter stories, most set in the townships and schools of 1970s Rhodesia in the last years of white-minority rule. It treats both home and country as places of hunger, violence and mental breakdown, told in an explosive, fragmented, darkly funny style that reviewers linked to Joyce, Beckett and Soyinka. The author wrote it after being sent down from New College, Oxford, reportedly while camping on Port Meadow outside the city. The manuscript was taken on by James Currey at Heinemann, and the following year it shared the Guardian Fiction Prize with Neil Jordan's Night in Tunisia. It is now regarded as a founding text of modern Zimbabwean literature. || Contents: House of hunger -- Burning in the rain -- The transformation of Harry -- Black skin what mask -- The writer's grain -- The slow sound of his feet -- The Christmas reunion -- Thought-tracks in the snow -- Are there people living there?;Fiction. Romans. Geographic: Zimbabwe -- Fiction. Zimbabwe -- Romans, nouvelles, etc.