Tiyambe Zeleza was born in Harare, Zimbabwe of Malawian parents in 1955. He studied for his BA at the University of Malawi, for his MA at London University and for his PhD at Dalhousie University. He has been employed by the universities of Malawi (1976-7), Nairobi (1979-80), the West Indies (1982-4) and Kenyatta (1984-9). He is currently Associate Professor of History at Trent University, Ontario, Canada.
His academic publications include Imperialism and Labour (1987), Labour, Unionization and Women's Participation in Kenya (1988) and the forthcoming A Modern Economic History of Africa. He began to write fiction in the early 1970s, and Night of Darkness and Other Stories was published in 1976. In the mid 1970s he was Editor of Odi, a bilingual quarterly of Malawian writing and Editor of Umodzi, a student's magazine. In 1974 he became a founding member of the Malawian Writer's Series. He is married and has a daughter.
