Works
Whilst at university, Vera submitted a story to a Toronto magazine: the publisher asked for more, so she sat down to write them. Her collection of short stories, Why Don't You Carve Other Animals was published in 1992. It was followed by five completed novels:
- Nehanda (1993), short-listed for Commonwealth Writers' Prize
- Without a Name (1994), awarded Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Africa and Zimbabwe Publishers' Literary Award
- Under the Tongue (1997)
- Butterfly Burning (2000), awarded German Literature Prize 2002, chosen as one of Africa's 100 Best Books of the 20th Century in 2002
- The Stone Virgins (2002), awarded Macmillan Writers' Prize for Africa
At the time of her death she was working on a new novel, Obedience. Her works have been published in Zimbabwe, Canada and several other countries, including translations into Spanish, Italian and Swedish.
Vera wrote obsessively, often for 10 hours a day, and described time when she was not writing as "a period of fasting." Her work was passionate and lyrical. She took on themes such as rape, incest and infanticide, and gender inequality in Zimbabwe before and after the country's war of independence with sensitivity and courage. She said, "I would love to be remembered as a writer who had no fear for words and who had an intense love for her nation." In 2004 she was awarded the Swedish PEN Tucholsky Prize "for a corpus of works dealing with taboo subjects".
Vera also edited several anthologies by Zimbabwean women writers.
Read more about this topic: Yvonne Vera
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“His character as one of the fathers of the English language would alone make his works important, even those which have little poetical merit. He was as simple as Wordsworth in preferring his homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it was neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to the dignity of a literature, and rendered a similar service to his country to that which Dante rendered to Italy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I know no subject more elevating, more amazing, more ready to the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment than the works of nature. Where can we meet such variety, such beauty, such magnificence?”
—James Thomson (1700–1748)