The House of Hunger (Penguin Modern Classics

One of African literature’s most fascinating and unorthodox figures’ Brian Chikwava’When all else fails, don’t take it in silence: scream like hell, scream like Jericho was tumbling down, serenaded by a brace of trombones, scream’Dambudzo Marechera burst onto the literary scene in 1978 with this vivid roar of a book exploring township life in pre-independence Zimbabwe. Rejecting what he saw as the narrow stereotypes of African literature, Marechera’s stories portrayed a world flashing with violence and anarchic humour, as his narrator expresses his desperate alienation – from his family, from his student friends, from Zimbabwe itself.’A writer who considered fiction a “form of combat”, complex, challenging – and uniquely potent’ Guardian’Like overhearing a scream’ Doris Lessing’A terrible beauty is born out of the urgency of his vision’ Angela Carter