Chenjerai Hove, one of Zimbabwe’s leading writers, whose poems and novels powerfully evoked the struggles of ordinary village folk before and after independence, died on July 12 in Stavanger, in southwestern Norway. He was 59.
His death, in a hospital, was announced on the website of theInternational Cities of Refuge Network, the aid organization that had brought him to Norway as a guest writer. Tor Ketil Solberg, the coordinator at the Stavanger City of Refuge, said that the cause was multiple organ failure. Mr. Hove’s wife, Thecla Hove, said he had been treated for liver disease, the BBC reported.
Writing primarily in English, but also in his native Shona, Mr. Hove vividly depicted the lives of the humblest of his countrymen caught up in the guerrilla war waged against British colonial rule and, after independence in 1980, dealing with the hopes and disappointments of living under Robert Mugabe’s rule.
Unusually for a male African writer, he often put women at the center of his stories. The central figure in his most celebrated novel, “Bones” (1988), is Marita, a farm laborer whose son has left to join the guerrillas but has failed to return from the war, prompting a heart-rending search that takes her far from home to the city.
The novel, written in a rich, Shona-inflected English, draws on biblical language, oral narrative style and folk proverbs. Mr. Hove often described his artistic mission as “cleansing the colonial languages,” a task that depended, he said, on “the inspiration of the great masters of oral narrative.”
“Bones,” hailed as “a landmark” by the Zimbabwean scholar Emmanuel Ngara — the author of “Art and Ideology in the African Novel” — was translated into a dozen languages and won the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.
In newspaper columns and essays, Mr. Hove painted a bleak picture of post-independence Zimbabwe and sharply criticized the Mugabe regime. The government retaliated with a campaign of intimidation that drove him into exile in 2001 — first to France, then to the United States and finally to Norway, where the International Cities of Refuge Network, an organization that helps persecuted writers, placed him as a guest writer in Stavanger.
“Chenjerai was a national treasure,” Wilf Mbanga, the editor of the British-based weekly The Zimbabwean, told The Independent of London. “It is such a tragedy that one of Zimbabwe’s best-known writers was hounded out of his country and forced to live — and die — in exile. He was never afraid to speak the truth, no matter however painful that might be.”
Chenjerai Hove (pronounced CHEN-jer-aye HO-vay) was born on Feb. 9, 1956, in Mazvihwa, Rhodesia. His father was a local chief with many wives and dozens of children. The younger Mr. Hove attended Roman Catholic schools run by the Marist brothers and, after graduating from a teacher training college, taught literature in rural high schools. He studied for degrees in language and literature at the University of Zimbabwe and then, in the 1980s, was a literary editor at Mambo Press and Zimbabwe Publishing House.
“Up in Arms” (1982), his first book of poetry, depicted in taut, lyrical verse the emotional devastation wrought by the independence struggle. “These poems ring with the self-evident truth of one who had suffered and survived, one who has been there,” the Zimbabwean novelist Charles Mungoshi wrote in his introduction to the book.
“Red Hills of Home,” published in 1985, reflected Mr. Hove’s inner conflict over the brutality he witnessed while teaching in the countryside. In his 1998 collection, “Rainbows in the Dust,” he lamented the broken promises of the independence movement.
He turned to prose fiction in the mid-1980s, writing, in Shona, about the plight of Zimbabwean women in the novel “Masimba Avanhu?” (“Is This the People’s Power?”), published in 1986. He followed up on the success of “Bones” with “Shadows” (1991), a harrowing tale of two lovers coping with poverty and the violence of the bush war. In the fable-like “Ancestors,” he told the story of a young boy, growing up on the eve of independence, who is haunted in his dreams by ancestral female voices.
Mr. Hove also published two collections of political essays, “Shebeen Tales: Messages From Harare” (1994) and “Palaver Finish” (2002). Speaking last year on the BBC radio program “Focus on Africa,” he said that it was his responsibility “as a citizen, as an African, as a Zimbabwean” to take a critical look at his own country — “to look at our lives and at whether our leaders are enhancing our dignity or taking it away.”
Mr. Hove was a founder and board member of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association, and in 1984 he became the first president of the Zimbabwe Writers Union, a post he held until 1992. In addition to his wife, he is survived by six children and many siblings.
“I try to write in order to fight the decay called silence, to communicate with myself so as to search for the ‘other’ in me,” he wrote in 2007 in an essay for the collection “Writers Under Siege: Voices of Freedom From Around the World.”
He continued: “What keeps me going is that every new word and metaphor I create is a little muscle in the act of pushing the dictatorship away from our real and imaginative existence.”
Mr. Hove’s body was flown back to Zimbabwe for burial.
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Chenjerai Hove (9 February 1956 – 12 July 2015), was a Zimbabwean poet, novelist and essayist who wrote in both English and Shona.[2] "Modernist in their formal construction, but making extensive use of oral conventions, Hove's novels offer an intense examination of the psychic and social costs - to the rural population, especially, of the war of liberation in Zimbabwe.".[3] Chenjerai Hove died on 12 July 2015,[4] he was in Norway at the time and his death has been attributed to liver failure.[5]
Life[edit]
The son of a local chief, Chenjerai Hove was born in Mazvihwa near Zvishavane, Rhodesia. He attended school at Kutama College and Marist Brothers Dete, in the Hwange district of Zimbabwe. After studying in Gweru, he became a teacher and then took degrees at the University of South Africa and the University of Zimbabwe.[2] He also worked as a journalist, and contributed to the anthology And Now the Poets Speak.[6] A critic of the policies of the Mugabe government, he was living in exile at the time of his death as the International Writers Project fellow in residence at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies.[7]
Publications[edit]
Chenjerai Hove published numerous novels, poetry anthologies and collections of essays and reflections. His publications include:
- And Now the Poets Speak (co-editor; poetry), 1981
- Up In Arms (poetry), Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1982
- Red Hills of Home (poetry), 1984; Gweru: Mambo Press, 1985.
- Bones (novel), Harare: Baobab Books, 1988; Heineman International AWS, 1989. ISBN 0-435-90576-7
- Shadows (novel), Harare: Baobab Books, 1991; Heinemann International Literature and Textbooks, 1992. ISBN 0-435-90591-0
- Shebeen Tales: Messages from Harare (journalistic essays), Harare: Baobab Books/London: Serif, 1994
- Rainbows in the Dust (poetry), 1997
- Guardians of the Soil (cultural reflections by Zimbabwe's elders), 1997. ISBN 0-908311-88-5
- Ancestors (novel), 1997. ISBN 0-330-34490-0
- Desperately Seeking Europe (co-author; essays on European identity), 2003
- Palaver Finish, essays on politics and life in Zimbabwe, 2003
- Blind Moon (poetry), 2004. ISBN 1-77922-019-7
- The Keys of Ramb (children's story), 2004
Honours and awards[edit]
- 1983 Special Commendations for the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, for Up in Arms[8]
- 1984 Inaugural President, Zimbabwe Writers Union
- 1988 Winner, Zimbabwe Literary Award, for Bones
- 1989 Winner, Noma Award for Publishing In Africa, for Bones[8]
- 1990 Founding Board Member, Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (Zimrights)
- 1991-94 Writer-in-Residence, University of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe
- 1994 Visiting Professor, Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon, USA
- 1995 Guest Writer, Yorkshire and Humberside Arts and Leeds University, UK
- 1996 Guest Writer, Heinrich Böll Foundation, Germany
- 1998 Second Prize, Zimbabwe Literary Award, for Ancestors
- 2001 German-Africa Prize for literary contribution to freedom of expression
- 2007-08 International Writers Project Fellow, Brown University
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Chenjerai Hove (b. February 9, 1956 – d. July 12, 2015), was a Zimbabwean poet, novelist and essayist who wrote in both English and Shona.
Chenjerai Hove was born on February 9, 1956, in Mazvihwa, Rhodesia. His father was a local chief with many wives and dozens of children. The younger Mr. Hove attended Roman Catholic schools run by the Marist brothers and, after graduating from a teacher training college, taught literature in rural high schools. He studied for degrees in language and literature at the University of Zimbabwe and then, in the 1980s, was a literary editor at Mambo Press and Zimbabwe Publishing House.
“Up in Arms” (1982), his first book of poetry, depicted in taut, lyrical verse the emotional devastation wrought by the independence struggle. “These poems ring with the self-evident truth of one who had suffered and survived, one who has been there,” the Zimbabwean novelist Charles Mungoshi wrote in his introduction to the book.
“Red Hills of Home,” published in 1985, reflected Mr. Hove’s inner conflict over the brutality he witnessed while teaching in the countryside. In his 1998 collection, “Rainbows in the Dust,” he lamented the broken promises of the independence movement.
He turned to prose fiction in the mid-1980s, writing, in Shona, about the plight of Zimbabwean women in the novel “Masimba Avanhu?” (“Is This the People’s Power?”), published in 1986. He followed up on the success of “Bones” with “Shadows” (1991), a harrowing tale of two lovers coping with poverty and the violence of the bush war. In the fable-like “Ancestors,” he told the story of a young boy, growing up on the eve of independence, who is haunted in his dreams by ancestral female voices.
Mr. Hove also published two collections of political essays, “Shebeen Tales: Messages From Harare” (1994) and “Palaver Finish” (2002). Speaking last year on the BBC radio program “Focus on Africa,” he said that it was his responsibility “as a citizen, as an African, as a Zimbabwean” to take a critical look at his own country — “to look at our lives and at whether our leaders are enhancing our dignity or taking it away.”
Mr. Hove was a founder and board member of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association, and in 1984 he became the first president of the Zimbabwe Writers Union, a post he held until 1992. In addition to his wife, he is survived by six children and many siblings.
“Up in Arms” (1982), his first book of poetry, depicted in taut, lyrical verse the emotional devastation wrought by the independence struggle. “These poems ring with the self-evident truth of one who had suffered and survived, one who has been there,” the Zimbabwean novelist Charles Mungoshi wrote in his introduction to the book.
“Red Hills of Home,” published in 1985, reflected Mr. Hove’s inner conflict over the brutality he witnessed while teaching in the countryside. In his 1998 collection, “Rainbows in the Dust,” he lamented the broken promises of the independence movement.
He turned to prose fiction in the mid-1980s, writing, in Shona, about the plight of Zimbabwean women in the novel “Masimba Avanhu?” (“Is This the People’s Power?”), published in 1986. He followed up on the success of “Bones” with “Shadows” (1991), a harrowing tale of two lovers coping with poverty and the violence of the bush war. In the fable-like “Ancestors,” he told the story of a young boy, growing up on the eve of independence, who is haunted in his dreams by ancestral female voices.
Mr. Hove also published two collections of political essays, “Shebeen Tales: Messages From Harare” (1994) and “Palaver Finish” (2002). Speaking last year on the BBC radio program “Focus on Africa,” he said that it was his responsibility “as a citizen, as an African, as a Zimbabwean” to take a critical look at his own country — “to look at our lives and at whether our leaders are enhancing our dignity or taking it away.”
Mr. Hove was a founder and board member of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association, and in 1984 he became the first president of the Zimbabwe Writers Union, a post he held until 1992. In addition to his wife, he is survived by six children and many siblings.
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