An Elegy for Easterly: Book Review

An Elegy for Easterly, written by Petina Gappah, is a collection of powerfully moving stories that give voice to the realities of life in Zimbabwe now and in the recent past.

What’s it really like to live under the rule of Robert Mugabe? Petinah Gappah tells individual stories, each with a perspective of its own, to create a collage of life in Zimbabwe and the people who live there.

Life in Zimbabwe

In this debut collection, Gappah dissects, with real poignancy, the lives of people caught up in a situation over which they have no control.  Spiralling inflation, power cuts and financial hardship became a way of life under Mugabe’s regime, and this is the climate in which Gappah’s characters cope with failed promises, disappointments and unfulfilled dreams.

Meet the widow of a politician in At the Sound of the Last Post, and the 'swollen' Martha Mupengo of Easterly Farm in the story that shares the book's title, as well as the the lady who now lives In the Heart of the Golden Triangle, among a cast of others.

Petinah Gappah at Franschhoek Literary Fair

Petina Gappah will be one of the featured authors at the Franschhoek Literary Fair in May 2009, and An Elegy for Easterly (Faber & Faber), R194.95 is in book stores now.

About the author:

Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean writer with law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University, and the University of Zimbabwe. Her short fiction and essays have been published in eight countries. She lives with her son Kush in Geneva, where she works as counsel in an international organisation that provides legal aid on international trade law to developing countries. Her story collection, An Elegy for Easterly is published by Faber in April 2009. She is currently completing The Book of Memory, her first novel.

Author info: Cindy Moritz

Cindy Moritz is All4Women's contributing editor based in Cape Town. She spent ten years in magazine publishing, and was editor of fashion business title Pursuit for most of that time. She went on to edit popular parenting title Cape Town's Child, drawing on her own experience as mother of two young children. Deciding to practise what she preached, after a couple of years Cindy gave up the office job to pursue that fine balance of work and life which freelancing offers, and after having features published in a number of local magazines including Elle, Longevity, Femina and Strictly Business, she discovered www.all4women.co.za and online publishing. She's never looked back.