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kraghen21's review against another edition
2.0
Black Sunlight is a book about Christian, a press photographer from an unnamed African country, who returns after studying at Oxford and finds upon his return a nation in utter chaos.
If you swap the name and vocation out with 'Dambudzo' and 'writer', and the nation with Zimbabwe, it fits the author's own experience. And while Dambudzo Marechera does write in a semi-autobiographical mode at times, the literary stylings of this book propels it into different territory.
Traditional foundations of novels are not really to be found here. There is no story or actual characters (they are clearly just writers' sticks) and the setting is only vaguely inferred even though a lot of time is spent musing on it (a state in a period of anarchic violence, resembling the transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe in the late 70's).
Dambudzo is much more of a sentence writer than a novelist. His writing talent is quite obvious; he writes with a real verve and poetic flair on a sentence level. It is tempting to call him a kind of African Rimbaud (Dambudzo was also reckless, anti-authoritarian, and died much too young).
Unfortunately, as good as the language can be, for me, it did not end up amounting to much. That is to say, the book dissolves into a state of just language. James Joyce-style streams of associate language, vaguely connected to some idea or thought that I often could not find or follow.
Much of the book is - depending on your tastes - either impenetrable quasi-philosophical speculation or Modernist consciousness-writing of the highest order. It can probably be both at the same time, but for me, it was more of the former.
It is a pity because the talent is obviously there, but as a reader, I need a bit more structure too endure this type of writing, even though the book is a very short one.
I should have probably started with House of Hunger, which I am still ready to give a chance.
If you swap the name and vocation out with 'Dambudzo' and 'writer', and the nation with Zimbabwe, it fits the author's own experience. And while Dambudzo Marechera does write in a semi-autobiographical mode at times, the literary stylings of this book propels it into different territory.
Traditional foundations of novels are not really to be found here. There is no story or actual characters (they are clearly just writers' sticks) and the setting is only vaguely inferred even though a lot of time is spent musing on it (a state in a period of anarchic violence, resembling the transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe in the late 70's).
Dambudzo is much more of a sentence writer than a novelist. His writing talent is quite obvious; he writes with a real verve and poetic flair on a sentence level. It is tempting to call him a kind of African Rimbaud (Dambudzo was also reckless, anti-authoritarian, and died much too young).
Unfortunately, as good as the language can be, for me, it did not end up amounting to much. That is to say, the book dissolves into a state of just language. James Joyce-style streams of associate language, vaguely connected to some idea or thought that I often could not find or follow.
Much of the book is - depending on your tastes - either impenetrable quasi-philosophical speculation or Modernist consciousness-writing of the highest order. It can probably be both at the same time, but for me, it was more of the former.
It is a pity because the talent is obviously there, but as a reader, I need a bit more structure too endure this type of writing, even though the book is a very short one.
I should have probably started with House of Hunger, which I am still ready to give a chance.
blood_poetry's review
5.0
Simply said: more people need to read this book. So energetic and stylized. I haven't read it in years, but simply reading the title makes me excited. Utterly original.
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