Today marks the day Chenjerai Hove died of liver failure in Norway while in exile in 2015. Chenjerai Hove, was a Zimbabwean poet, novelist and essayist and was one of the founding figures of modern Zimbabwean literature – a group of writers whose work dealt with the societies of both pre- and post-independence.

Hove was born in Mazvihwa, in rural Rhodesia, the son of a local chief. He was educated at two Catholic boarding schools: Kutama college in the Zvimba area west of Harare (then Salisbury), and Marist Brothers, in Hwange, in the north-west of the country. He later studied at both the University of South Africa, in Pretoria, and what is now the University of Zimbabwe, in Harare. In his early days after university he made his living as a teacher and in the publishing industry.

In exile, Hove longed to return to Zimbabwe, and had hope for the future. “Dictatorships, tyrannies, they are transient: they come and pass,” he said. “I understand that, and I will go through that.” Sadly he failed to get to the end of the Mugabe era, but he will be remembered as someone who wrote beautifully and who did not sell his soul for the squalid rhetoric that dominates Zimbabwe today.

He is survived by his wife, Tekla, and by six children.