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Petina Gappah

Biography

Petina Gappah

Petina Gappah is an award-winning and widely translated Zimbabwean writer. She is the author of two novels --- OUT OF DARKNESS, SHINING LIGHT and THE BOOK OF MEMORY --- The Book of Memory, and two short story collections: ROTTEN ROW and AN ELEGY FOR EASTERLY. Her work has also been published in, among others, The New YorkerDer Spiegel, The Financial Times and the Africa Report. For many years, Petina worked as an international trade lawyer at the highest levels of diplomacy in Geneva where she advised more than 70 developing countries from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America on trade law and policy.  Petina has also been a DAAD Writing Fellow in Berlin, an Open Society Fellow and a Livingstone Scholar at Cambridge University.  She has law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University in Austria, and the University of Zimbabwe. She currently lives in Harare.

Petina Gappah

Books by Petina Gappah

by Petina Gappah

By turns alluring and provocative, the stories in An Elegy for Easterly mark the debut of a keenly perceptive talent. Inspired by her life in Harare, Zimbabwe, Petina Gappah blends fiction with headline events to examine everyday life under the cataclysmic regime of Robert Mugabe.