(1980) is the second major prose work of the Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera. Published two years after his highly acclaimed award-winning debut novella
The House of Hunger(1978),
Black Sunlightcourted far less critical attention than its predecessor. An experimental text considered by many early readers to be “unreadable and overdrawn” (Veit-Wild, “Words as Bullets” 116), the novel takes as its main focus the inadequacy of essentialist notions of racial and national identity. Read in the context of a critique of the demands made by radical oppositional politics,
Black Sunlightreveals the immanent shortfalls of the “revolutionary” agenda of Zimbabwe’s anti-colonial struggle. It is perhaps for this reason, and not those of “obscenity and blasphemy”…
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Citation: Chow, Shun Man Emily, Grant Hamilton. "Black Sunlight". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 March 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=28557, accessed 23 November 2024.]
