In her widely-cited review of The House of Hunger, Juliet Okonkwo criticizes the debut writer Dambudzo Marechera for self-purposefully subjecting his readers to a grotesque imagery:

Okonkwo goes on to object to Marechera's abundant and apparently haphazard use of ‘obscene and four-letter words,’ which, as she maintains, ‘are used purely for their own sake.’ Okonkwo's critique is emblematic in the sense that it articulates the discrepancy between the African nation-building ethos and Marechera's disillusioned postcolonial poetics. While several critics maintained that The House of Hunger witnessed Marechera's writerly talent, if not ingenuity – this is something that even Okonkwo suggests in her review – the novella obviously did not meet the demands of contemporary political agendas that had their bearing on the conception of literature. Okonkwo's words convey the great expectations and hopes set in independence, suggesting simultaneously that, in the face of such a great collective liberatory effort, there is something truly inappropriate in Marechera's violently grotesque approach.