In the final months of his life, she sat beside his hospital bed carrying a secret of her own.

The Zimbabwean writer was gravely ill with AIDS-related pneumonia.

Dambudzo Marechera was emaciated, bedridden and psychologically fragile.

Flora Veit-Wild, the German scholar who had become his lover, carer and later the leading custodian of his literary work, had taken an HIV test after learning of his condition.

“The news sets me into a state of panic.

Three weeks later I get my test results: I am HIV-positive.” Veit-Wild later explained that she feared the news would add unbearable guilt to the suffering of a man who was already close to death.

She kept quiet while sitting with him in hospital, helping him through his final days and watching him struggle to make sense of unfinished work and unsettled affairs.

Marechera died at Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare on 18 August 1987, aged 35.

He was buried at Warren Hills Cemetery.

His death brought to an end the life of one of Zimbabwe’s most celebrated and difficult literary figures, but it also marked the beginning of Veit-Wild’s long effort to preserve the writing he left behind.

Their relationship had begun four years earlier, in October 1983, at the offices of Zimbabwe Publishing House in Harare.

Veit-Wild had recently moved to Zimbabwe with her family and was studying the country’s developing literary culture.

Marechera was 31, homeless and drifting between temporary places to stay.

He was drinking vodka from a bottle and carrying the reputation of a writer whose talent was matched by his instability.

He had already won international attention for The House of Hunger, which received the Guardian Fiction Prize.

But the success had not brought him a settled life.

After being expelled from New College, Oxford, he returned to Zimbabwe and struggled with poverty, alcohol and homelessness.

His health and mental state worsened as his life became increasingly unsettled.

When he first saw Veit-Wild, he made an immediate impression.

Looking at her clothes, he said: “Oh, my lawd, your garments cannot be from here.

You would rather expect them in a Bloomsbury setting than in prissy old Salisbury.” What began as a professional interest soon became an intense affair.

Veit-Wild drove into the city to collect Marechera.

They drank gin and tonics at the Oasis Hotel, argued about European politics and met at the University of Zimbabwe swimming pool at night.

They also visited the Seven Miles Hotel, where their private encounters unfolded against a background of secrecy, alcohol and growing emotional tension.

Veit-Wild was married to Victor Veit and had children.

Marechera was eventually invited to stay on the family’s property in the affluent Harare suburb of Highlands.

He lived in a garden cottage, ate meals with the household and took part in long conversations about literature.

Victor knew about the affair and recognised Marechera’s extraordinary ability, even as the writer depended on the family for shelter, money and emotional support.

The arrangement was far from peaceful.

Marechera distrusted Veit-Wild’s position as a white European academic in post-independence Zimbabwe.

He questioned whether she was using him for her career and at one point accused her of working for the Central Intelligence Organisation.

During one argument, he smashed the window of her car.

In another confrontation, he told her: “All you want is my black dick....