At the
University of Oxford, Marechera struck his professors as a very intelligent but rather anarchic student who had no particular interest in adhering to course syllabi, choosing rather to read whatever struck his fancy. He also had a reputation for being a quarrelsome young man who did not hesitate to fight his antagonists physically, especially in the pubs around Oxford. He began to display erratic behaviour, which the school psychologist diagnosed as
schizophrenia. Marechera threatened to murder certain people and attempted to set the university on fire. He was also famous — or notorious — for having no respect for authority derived from notions of racial or class superiority. For trying to set the college on fire, Marechera was given two options: either to submit to a psychiatric examination or be sent down; he chose the latter, charging that they were mentally raping him. At this point, Marechera's life became troubled, even landing him in
Cardiff Prison in 1977 for possession of marijuana, and a decision regarding his deportation. He joined the rootless communities around Oxford and other places, sleeping in friends' sitting-rooms and writing various fictional and poetic pieces on park benches and being regularly mugged by thugs and harassed by the police for vagrancy. During this period, he also lived for many months in the squatting community at
Tolmers Square in central London.
Publication Marechera's first book and magnum opus,
The House of Hunger (1978) – a collection of one novella and nine satellite short stories – came immediately after his largely disappointing time at
New College, Oxford.
The House of Hunger was taken on by
James Currey at
Heinemann and published in their
African Writers Series. The book's long title story describes the narrator's troubled childhood and youth in colonial Rhodesia.
The House of Hunger was awarded the 1979
Guardian Fiction Prize. Marechera was the first and the only African to have won the award in its 33 years, and he became a celebrity in the literary circles of England. However, he constantly caused outrage. At the buffet dinner for the award of the Guardian Fiction Prize, in a tantrum Marechera began to launch plates at a chandelier. Nevertheless,
Leeds University and the
University of Sheffield offered him positions as a
writer-in-residence. Marechera thought the British publishing establishment was ripping him off, so he resorted to raiding the Heinemann offices at odd times to ask for his royalties. Still, he lived in dire poverty and his physical health suffered greatly because he did not eat enough and drank too much. Friends, fellow Zimbabwean students such as poet
Musaemura Zimunya, Rino Zhuwarara, writer
Stanley Nyamfukudza, and mere casual friends were all suspected by Marechera of being involved in his many troubles even when they acted in good faith. In the end he hung around with the down-and-outs who lived on the fringes of the literary establishment, barging into parties and generally getting into trouble and more than once, being bailed out by Currey. He was regularly thrown out of the
Africa Centre, the cultural meeting-place in London's
Covent Garden for African and Afrocentric scholars and students. Some accounts suggest that Marechera married a British woman but not much is known about the union. Marechera's 1980 experimental novel
Black Sunlight has been compared with the writing of
James Joyce and
Henry Miller, but it did not achieve the critical success of
The House of Hunger. It explores the idea of
anarchism as a formal intellectual position. ==Return to Zimbabwe and final years==