Alexander Kanengoni

Alexander Kanengoni
Born	(1951-09-17)17 September 1951 Chivhu, Zimbabwe
Died	12 April 2016(2016-04-12) (aged 64) Harare, Zimbabwe
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	Zimbabwean
Alma mater	Kutama College University of Zimbabwe

Alexander Gore Kanengoni (17 September 1951 – 12 April 2016) was a Zimbabwean writer and veteran of the Zimbabwe War of Liberation.

Life

Kanengoni trained as a teacher at Kutama College. He joined the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) in 1974, before enrolling at the University of Zimbabwe following independence in 1980. Kanengoni later worked for the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation and the Patriot newspaper.[1][2]

He is best known for his war novel Echoing Silences, which has been described as 'an extraordinarily powerful novel, on a par with Bao Ninh's novel of the Vietnamese struggle, The Sorrow of War.'[3] Alexandra Fuller dedicated her second novel,Scribbling the Cat, to Kanengoni. Fuller had never met Kanengoni, but considered him the metaphorical ‘godfather’ to her novel after she discovered Echoing Silences in Johannesburg airport.[4]

Works

• Kanengoni, Alexander (1983). Vicious Circle. Macmillan Education.
• —— (1987). When the Rainbird Cries. Harare: Longman.
• —— (1993). Effortless Tears. Harare: Baobab Books.
• —— (1998). Echoing Silences. London: Heinemann, African Writers Series.
• —— (2003). Writing Still. Harare: Waever Press.

References

1. Mail, The Sunday (14 April 2016). "'In Kanengoni we have lost a giant'". The Sunday Mail. Retrieved 29 October 2022.
2. Chipato, Victor (12 April 2016). "Zimbabwe: Prominent Writer Kanengoni Dies - Report". allAfrica.com.
3. Chan, Stephen (1 March 2005). "The Memory of Violence: trauma in the writings of Alexander Kanengoni and Yvonne Vera and the idea of unreconciled citizenship in Zimbabwe". Third World Quarterly. 26 (2): 369–382. doi:10.1080/0143659042000339164. ISSN 0143-6597. S2CID 144446384.
4. Norridge, Zoe (13 August 2023). "The Need to Go Further?". The Need to Go Further?: Dedication & Distance in the War Narratives of Alexandra Fuller & Alexander Kanengoni. Vol. 26. Boydell & Brewer. pp. 103–11. ISBN 9780852555712. JSTOR 10.7722/j.ctt1bh2m0v.12. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)

External links

• Literary Encyclopedia