PENGUIN AFRICAN WRITERS : BLACK SUNLIGHT PB B FORMAT – DAMBUDZO MARECHERA

In an unspecified setting, the stream-of-consciousness narrative of this cult novel traces the fortunes of a group of anarchists in revolt against a military-fascist capitalist opposition. The protagonist is photojournalist Chris, whose camera lens becomes the device through which the plot is cleverly unravelled. In Dambudzo Marechera s second experimental novel, he parodies African nationalist and racial identifications as part of an argument that notions of an essential African identity were often invoked to authorise a number of totalitarian regimes across Africa. Such irreverent, avant-garde literature was criticised upon publication in Zimbabwe in 1980, and Black Sunlight was banned on charges of Euromodernism and as a challenge to the concept of nation-building in the newly independent country.