A Zimbabwean novelist and poet of the Twentieth Century, he is best known for Black Sunlight and The House of Hunger. Many of his poems were published posthumously in a collection entitled Cemetery of Mind.
He attended St. Augustine's Mission school and took issue with the institution's European-centric syllabus.
He died in his thirties from an AIDS-related pulmonary disorder.
He was the Zimbabwean-born son of a mortuary worker and a maid. He is rumored to have married a British woman.
His writing style has been compared to that of James Joyce.
