A woman in a township in Zimbabwe is surrounded by throngs of dusty children but longs for a baby of her own; an old man finds that his job making coffins at No Matter Funeral Parlour brings unexpected riches; a politician’s widow quietly stands by at her husband’s funeral watching his colleagues bury an empty coffin.
Petina Gappah’s characters may have ordinary hopes and dreams, but they are living in a world where a loaf of bread costs half a million dollars; a country expected to have only four presidents in a hundred years; and a place where people know exactly what will be printed in the one and only daily newspaper because the news is always, always good.
In her spirited debut collection, Zimbabwean author Petina Gappah brings us the resilience and inventiveness of the people who struggle to live under Robert Mugabe’s regime whilst also battling issues common to all people everywhere: failed promises, unfulfilled dreams and the yearning for something to anchor them to life.
Reviews
Petina Gappah is a fine writer and a rising star of Zimbabwean literature.
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- J. M. Coetzee
Petina Gappah makes wrenching tragedy out of Mugabe’s assault on his own people.
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- Boyd Tonkin, The Independent
Though Gappah's characters run the gamut of class from super-wealthy to destitute, she is at her best in her depiction of ordinary people, their ambitions and dreams of a better life even as everything around them crumbles. Through humour and compassion, she depicts that most quintessential of African characteristics: the ability to laugh at life, for fear of crying.
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- The Guardian
It is the frequent humour in these stories that makes them remarkable, even if their outcomes can be tragic. Often satirical, occasionally lyrical, they are a delight.
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- The Observer
In her accomplished debut, Gappah, a Zimbabwean writer and international trade lawyer, casts her compassionate eye on a diverse array of characters living, grieving, loving—and fighting to survive—under Robert Mugabe's regime… Gappah's deep well of empathy and saber-sharp command of satire give her collection a surplus of heart and verve.
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- Publishers Weekly
What is perhaps most compelling and important about
Elegy for Easterly is that it can speak to us all. With this collection she has produced a painful and powerful vision of a nation throughout its stages of anticipation and agony, while reminding us all that the pictures we see on news screens are not quite as distant and irrelevant as we might sometimes imagine.
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- Politics.co.uk
Barely a word of the author’s pithy prose is wasted…a fiercely indignant, justly cynical and bravely unflinching work.
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- Sunday Times
Searing, but never over the top: Gappah holds the anger and horror in check with exemplary artistic discipline.
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- Kirkus (Starred Review)
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