Outcasts inside a ruined and deserted faculty building tell of their experiences in the post-colonial disaster zone. The story reflects the writer's experience of migrancy, and his refusal of the security of belonging - either to an "African identity" or to the international literary elite. "A profund even if exaggeratedly self-aware writer, an instinctive nomad and Bohemian in temperament, marechera was a writer in constant quest for his real self, quarrying towards a core that he once wryly expressed in the cry, 'My whole life has been an attempt to make myself a skeleton in my own cupboard.'" --Wole Soyinka This was the first volume of Dambudzo marechera's work to appear since his death in 1987. The title piece, the major work in this collection, was written in London in 1978. It has been edited here by Marechera's biographer, Flora Veit-Wild, together with three short stories and two poems from the same period. Veit-Wild's introduction provides a vivid picture of the young Zimbabwean's life in Britain as a student and writer. 'The Black Insider' develops the preoccupations of his award-winning 'House of Hunger' by exploring, in his devastatingly honest way, the predicaments of exile and the black identity, and examining the realities of living under the threat of the Bomb. Above all, 'The Black Insider' gives a brilliant and profound insight into Marechera's concept of the liberating force of literature, a literature which "unhinges the world and churns up people's minds." Dambudzo Marechera, a Zimabwean who died at the young age of 35 in 1987, is also the author of the award winning novel, 'House of Hunger'. He left behind a large number of unpublished lterary works. 'The Black Insider', 'Cemetery of Mind', and 'Scrapiron Blues' comprise many of his poems and short stories that wre published after his death. Chapter 1: .... The ability to read and write exposes the mind to the haustoria of everything that is written. The parasite is entirely dependent for food upon our minds. There are very few animals living in natural conditions which do not possess at least one parasite, and sometimes a whole fauna is sheltered un various parts of our thinking. Apart fro such ectoparasites as bugs, like fleas, mosquitoes, leeches, and vampire bats which lead a free existence but periodically attack the host to suck blood, there are endoparasites which actually live permanently in our minds. The latter are also known collectively as 'culture', 'tradition', 'history' or 'civilization'. There is a definite degree of tolerance established between host and parasite; each becomes adapted to the other. It is not to the advantage of a parasite to cause serious harm to its host, as thus it is likely to suffer itself. To cause the death of its host is tantamount to its committing suicide. There have been cultures, however, in Germany, Uganda, Japan, and South Africa which have pig-headedly embroiled their host in catastrophic strife. Hermann hesse sought to excape the social parasite: Would you really want to be a gentleman now, and a master craftsman with a wife and children reading the paper by the fireside? Look, said God, I wanted you The way you are and no different You were a wanderer in my name and wherever you went you brought the settled folk a little homesickness for freedom. And in South Africa, Mtshali saw the grim parasitism everwhere: Glorious is this world, the world that sustains man like a maggot in a carcass. Language is like water. You can drink it. You can swin in it. You can drown in it. You can wear a snorkel in it. You can flow to the sea in it. You can evaporate and become invisible with it. You can remain standing in a bucket for hours. The Japanese invented a way of torturing people with drops of wter. The Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique also used water to torutre people. The dead friend Owen, who painted the mural on my wall, used to dream about putting LSD into South Africa's drinking water. It seems inconceivable to think of humans who have no language. They may have invented gelignite but they cannot do without water. Some take it neat from rivers and wells. Some have it chemically treated and reservoired. Others drink nothing but beer and Bloody Marys and wine but this too is a way of taking your wter. The way you take your water is supposed to say a lot about you. It is supposed to reflect your history, culture, your breeding, etc. It is supposed to show the extent to which you and your nation have developed or degenerated. The word 'primitive' is applied to all those who take their alphabet neat from rivers, sewers, and natural scenery--sometimes this may be described as the romantic imagination. The height of sophistication is actually to channel your water through a system of pipes right into your very own lavatory wher you shake the hand of a machine and your shit and filthy manners disappear in a roaring of water. Being water you can spread diseases like bilharzia and