A short life of the author
Petina Gappah (born 1971) is a Zimbabwean writer and international trade lawyer whose short stories and novels illuminate life in Zimbabwe — from Harare’s townships to the corridors of power — with sharp social observation, dark humor, and a legal mind’s attention to justice and its failures.
Life and Career
Gappah studied law in Zimbabwe and obtained a doctorate in international trade law in Austria. She has worked at the World Trade Organization and the African Development Bank, and this dual identity — literary writer and trade lawyer — gives her fiction an unusual perspective on institutions, power, and how ordinary people navigate systems built to exclude them.
An Elegy for Easterly (2009) was her debut story collection, set in Harare and populated by characters dealing with the crises of the Mugabe era — hyperinflation, political violence, AIDS — while maintaining the daily business of love, ambition, and survival. The stories were praised for their tonal range, moving from comedy to heartbreak within a single paragraph. The collection won the Guardian First Book Award.
The Book of Memory (2015), her first novel, was narrated by a woman with albinism who has been convicted of murder — a novel that explored prejudice, justice, and the unreliability of memory within a legal framework. The book was longlisted for the Baileys Prize.
Rotten Row (2016) was a second story collection, set around the Harare magistrates’ court, each story involving a legal case that revealed the social structures underneath. Out of Darkness, Shining Light (2019) was a historical novel about the African companions who carried David Livingstone’s body from the interior to the coast — a remarkable act of reclamation, telling a canonical colonial story from African perspectives.
Key Works
- An Elegy for Easterly (2009)
- The Book of Memory (2015)
- Rotten Row (2016)
- Out of Darkness, Shining Light (2019)
Collecting Gappah
First editions (Faber and Faber) bring $20–$40. An Elegy for Easterly is the key title. Gappah’s international legal career gives her a unique profile, and she is well-known on the literary festival circuit. Her work is increasingly taught in African and postcolonial literature programs.