Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Zimbabwe Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
He wrote in Shona and in English, won the Noma Award for Bones, and would not stop saying what he thought of the government — which is why he died in exile.
Chenjerai Hove was a teacher and editor who published poetry in Shona and then turned to fiction in English without giving up either language.
Bones, published in 1988, is told largely in the voices of farm workers looking for a son who went to the liberation war and did not come back, in a prose that carries the rhythm of Shona speech rather than of the English novel. It won the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. Shadows and Ancestors followed, along with essays and newspaper columns.
He was president of the Zimbabwe Writers Union and wrote a regular column that became steadily more direct about the conduct of the government, the violence of the land seizures and the collapse of the rule of law. He was followed, threatened and had his house watched, and in 2001 he left the country. He lived in France and then in Norway as a guest writer under the cities-of-refuge programme, and died in Stavanger in 2015, still unable to go home.
Bones, published in 1988, is told largely in the voices of farm workers looking for a son who went to the liberation war and did not come back, in a prose that carries the rhythm of Shona speech rather than of the English novel. It won the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. Shadows and Ancestors followed, along with essays and newspaper columns.
He was president of the Zimbabwe Writers Union and wrote a regular column that became steadily more direct about the conduct of the government, the violence of the land seizures and the collapse of the rule of law. He was followed, threatened and had his house watched, and in 2001 he left the country. He lived in France and then in Norway as a guest writer under the cities-of-refuge programme, and died in Stavanger in 2015, still unable to go home.
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