Short Story the Genre of Southern Africa, Says Chirere

Memory Chirere.

The next issue of Munyori Literary Journal will feature an essay by Memory Chirere on the state of the short story in Southern Africa. An award-winning short story writer himself, Chirere has often argued:

"Nearly every Southern African writer who has become prominent today started with short-stories or has a short story collection somewhere along the way. Dambudzo Marechera’s House of Hunger, Charles Mungoshi’s Coming of the Dry Season, Njabulo Ndehbele’s Fools and Other Stories, Ezekiel Mphahlele’s Corner B, Alan Paton’s Debbie Go Home and many others are short stories books. Even the so called novels from Southern African tend to be merely long short stories sometimes called novellas. One only has to see the very thin volumes of ‘novels’ like Gordimer’s July’s People and Laguma’s In The Fog of The Season’s End. The short-story is “the genre of Southern Africa” and the reasons for this are yet to be properly established."

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February 26, 2009 at 2:16 PM
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