Flora Veit-Wild

Last updated

Flora Veit-Wild (born 11 May 1947) [1] is a German literary academic, Professor of African Literatures and Cultures at Humboldt University, Berlin. She has published on the Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera, and on the body and madness in African literature.

Contents

Life

Flora Wild was born in West Germany in 1947, [2] and originally studied French and German languages and literature at university. [3]

She first met Dambudzo Marechera in Harare in 1983 in the office of writer and editor Charles Mungoshi. [4] [5] Veit-Wild and Marachere had a relationship, and remained close friends until his death in 1987. [6] Veit-Wild lived in Zimbabwe from 1983 to 1993. [7] In 1986 she met Dieter Riemenschneider in Harare, who subsequently supervised a PhD dissertation by Veit-Wild on the social history of Zimbabwean literature, which she gained in Anglistik from Frankfurt University in 1991. [3] She was a founder member of Zimbabwe Women Writers and of the Dambudzo Marechera Trust. [7]

In 1994 Veit-Wild became professor of African literatures and cultures at the African Studies Department, Humboldt University of Berlin, [2] where she is now Emeritus Professor of African Literature. [8]

The academic Agnieszka Piotrowska made a 2014 film about Veit-Wild's relationship with Marechera, Flora and Dambudzo. [6]

Veit-Wild's memoir They Called You Dambudzo was published in November 2020. [9]

Works

Related Research Articles

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1987.

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1979.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chenjerai Hove</span> Zimbabwean poet (1956–2015)

Chenjerai Hove, was a Zimbabwean poet, novelist and essayist who wrote in both English and Shona. "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." He died on 12 July 2015 while living in exile in Norway, with his death attributed to liver failure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dambudzo Marechera</span> Zimbabwean writer (1952–1987)

Dambudzo Marechera was a Zimbabwean novelist, short story writer, playwright and poet. His short career produced a book of stories, two novels, a book of plays, prose, and poetry, and a collection of poetry. His first book, a fiction collection entitled The House of Hunger (1978), won the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1979. Marechera was best known for his abrasive, heavily detailed and self-aware writing, which was considered a new frontier in African literature, and his unorthodox behaviour at the universities from which he was expelled despite excelling in his studies.

<i>The House of Hunger</i> 1978 book by Dambudzo Marechera

The House of Hunger (1978) is a novella/short story collection by Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera (1952–1987), his first published book, and was published three years after he left university and ten years before his death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tsitsi Dangarembga</span> Zimbabwean author and filmmaker

Tsitsi Dangarembga is a Zimbabwean novelist, playwright and filmmaker. Her debut novel, Nervous Conditions (1988), which was the first to be published in English by a Black woman from Zimbabwe, was named by the BBC in 2018 as one of the top 100 books that have shaped the world. She has won other literary honours, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the PEN Pinter Prize. In 2020, her novel This Mournable Body was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2022, Dangarembga was convicted in a Zimbabwe court of inciting public violence, by displaying, on a public road, a placard asking for reform.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yvonne Vera</span> Zimbabwean writer (1964–2005)

Yvonne Vera was an author from Zimbabwe. Her first published book was a collection of short stories, Why Don't You Carve Other Animals (1992), which was followed by five novels: Nehanda (1993), Without a Name (1994), Under the Tongue (1996), Butterfly Burning (1998), and The Stone Virgins (2002). Her novels are known for their poetic prose, difficult subject-matter, and their strong women characters, and are firmly rooted in Zimbabwe's difficult past. For these reasons, she has been widely studied and appreciated by those studying postcolonial African literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lesego Rampolokeng</span>

Lesego Rampolokeng is a South African writer, playwright and performance poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Balancing Rocks</span> Rocks with geomorphological features of igneous in Zimbabwe

The Balancing Rocks are geomorphological features of igneous rocks found in many parts of Zimbabwe, and are particularly noteworthy in Matopos National Park, and near the township of Epworth, to the southeast of Harare.

Articles related to Zimbabwe include:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agnieszka Piotrowska</span> British film director of Polish origin

Agnieszka Piotrowska is an author, academic and award-winning filmmaker, probably best known for her 2008 documentary Married to the Eiffel Tower, about women who fall in love with objects."

Ignatius Tirivangani Mabasa is a Zimbabwean writer, storyteller, and musician, who writes mainly in Shona.

Hugh Lewin was a South African anti-apartheid activist and writer. He was imprisoned from 1964 to 1971 for his activities in support of the African Resistance Movement, and then spent 20 years in exile, returning to South Africa in 1992. An account of his experience, Bandiet, won the Olive Schreiner Prize in 2003.

Virginia Phiri is a Zimbabwean feminist writer.

Irene Staunton is a Zimbabwean publisher, editor, researcher and writer, who has worked in literature and the arts since the 1970s, both in the UK and Zimbabwe. She is co-founder and publisher of Weaver Press in Harare, having previously co-founded Baobab Books. Staunton is the editor of several notable anthologies covering oral history, short stories, and poetry, including Mothers of the Revolution: War Experiences of Thirty Zimbabwean Women (1990), Children in our Midst: Voices of Farmworker's Children (2000), Writing Still: New Stories from Zimbabwe (2003), Women Writing Zimbabwe (2008), Writing Free (2011), and Writing Mystery & Mayhem (2015).

Weaver Press is a Zimbabwean independent publisher formed in 1998 in Harare. The press was co-founded by Irene Staunton, who has been credited with "quietly shaping post-independence Zimbabwean literature", with Murray McCartney, and the Press has published many notable African writers. Weaver's list focuses on books on political and social history, the environment, media issues, women's and children's rights, fiction and literary criticism.

Robert Muponde is a Zimbabwean writer and intellectual. He is currently Personal Professor at University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he has been based for over twenty years.

Zimbabwean literature is literature produced by authors from Zimbabwe or in the Zimbabwean Diaspora. The tradition of literature starts with a long oral tradition, was influence heavily by western literature during colonial rule, and acts as a form of protest to the government.

Joyce Simango is a Zimbabwean author. She became the first female Shona novelist when she published Zviuya Zviri Mberi, or "Good Things are Ahead", in 1974.

References

  1. "Veit-Wild, Flora, 1947–". id.loc.gov. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
  2. 1 2 "Veit-Wild, Flora, 1947–". Library of Congress Name Authority File. Retrieved 20 January 2021.
  3. 1 2 Flora Veit-Wild (2002). "The Arduous Success Story of a 'Non-Discipline': Teaching African Literature at German Universities". In Gordon Collier; Frank Schulze-Engler (eds.). Crabtracks: Progress and Process in Teaching the New Literatures in English : Essays in Honour of Dieter Riemenschneider. Rodopi. p. 21. ISBN   90-420-1539-X.
  4. "They Called You Dambudzo". Reading Zimbabwe. Retrieved 27 February 2021.
  5. Flora Veit-Wild (2 March 2012). "Me and Dambudzo: a personal essay". Kwachirere.
  6. 1 2 Matthew Reisz (9 November 2014). "UK-based academic's film well received in Zimbabwe". Times Higher Education Supplement . Retrieved 18 January 2021.
  7. 1 2 Carole Boyce-Davies; Molara Ogundipe-Leslie (1995). Moving Beyond Boundaries (Vol. 2): Black Women's Diasporas. NYU Press. p. 328. ISBN   978-0-8147-1240-5.
  8. "LitFest discusses Marechera". The Herald. 23 November 2020.
  9. Lizzy Attree (23 February 2021). "Review: They Called You Dambudzo: A Memoir by Flora Veit-Wild". Africa in Words. Retrieved 27 February 2021.