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An Elegy for Easterly (Paperback)

by Petina Gappah (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Faber and Faber (16 April 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0571246931
  • ISBN-13: 978-0571246939
  • Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 13.5 x 2.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 55,248 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

Petina Gappah is the voice of Zimbabwe. In this astonishingly powerful debut collection, she dissects with real poignancy the lives of people caught up in a situation over which they have no control, as they deal with spiralling inflation, power cuts and financial hardship - a way of life under Mugabe's regime - and cope with issues common to all people everywhere; failed promises, disappointments and unfulfilled dreams. Compelling, unflinching and tender, "An Elegy for Easterly" is a defining book, and a stunning portrait of a country in chaotic meltdown.


About the Author

Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean writer. Her writing has already appeared in eight countries - she has written for Prospect, Farafina, Per Contra, the Guardian, the Mail and Guardian, Suddeutsche Zeitung and the Zimbabwe Times and the website of Granta magazine. Petina's writing awards include Zimbabwe's Mukuru Nyaya Award for comic writing, and a runner-up award in the SA/PEN HSBC short story competition judged by JM Coetzee. She has law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University in Austria and the University of Zimbabwe and currently works in Geneva as an international trade lawyer. In addition to English and her native language Shona, Petina also speaks German and French.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning debut collection, 13 April 2009
This debut short-story collection by Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah is a wonderful read. The tone of each one is perfect: the language is consistently beautiful but also completely natural. You get to know the characters very quickly, through small details artfully described, and are left at just the right moment to move on to the next tale.

The title gives a clue to what's in store. "Elegy" is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "A song of lamentation, esp. a funeral song or lament for the dead". This book feels like Petina Gappah's lament for the Zimbabwe she grew up in, a Zimbabwe that has been scarred by political corruption, economic chaos and the scourge of AIDS. I can't say whether she means to say that the Zimbabwe she knew is dead. Of course the country endures, the people endure, and that's what these stories are about. Perhaps the lament is not so much for the country itself as for the people who have suffered so much. In any case, there's a deep sadness underlying all these stories, and there's a death or a funeral in most of the stories.

Yet the strange thing is that there's also a lot of humour, and the humour often goes hand-in-hand with the sadness. There's the old carpenter who is cheated out of his pension and wins a dancing contest, the diplomat who is new to email and loses thousands of euros to the old lottery scam, and the bizarre goings-on at the Hotel California. In many of the stories, the humour is very real and genuinely funny, and yet it feels like a thin veneer which Gappah deliberately lets slip every now and then, exposing the horror underneath.

My favourite story, though, has no real humour. It's called 'Something Nice from London' and tells of a family waiting at the airport for the twice-weekly flight from London. The title refers to the hope that relatives in the UK will either return or send back money or gifts for their families. With the collapse of the economy, a few UK pounds is millions of Zimbabwe dollars, and can help a family to survive. But it gradually becomes clear that what this particular family is waiting for is the coffin of their son, Peter. And what follows is a tragic, drawn-out description of the anxious waiting for weeks and weeks, interspersed with explanations of what brought Peter and the family to this point, all the sacrifices and mistakes and disappointments. It's important that the body returns because the whole extended family is staying at their house awaiting the funeral, and they literally can't afford to feed them much longer.

It's probably not a representative story to pick - the others, as I said, had more humour mixed in with the tragedy, and I think it's that mixture that makes the book successful. But this particular story really got to me more than all the others. There's just a real power to that image of the family waiting at the airport, surrounded by all the other people waiting for 'Something nice from London' while they are waiting for the coffin of their son.

Which brings me back to the tone. When describing suffering, and especially when interspersing it with humour, there are a lot of pitfalls to avoid: melodrama, tastelessness, didacticism and exploitation to name but a few. Gappah skips effortlessly through the minefield, achieving just the right tone in every story. It's a tremendous achievement, and I look forward to reading more from her.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping, 19 April 2009
By Ms. K. Thomas (Essex, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
An Elegy for Easterly is a collection of short stories all revolving around different people from Zimbabwe, people of all classes suffering from similar problems.
Presidents wifes left to suffer after the husband dies of AIDS, families cheated by neighbours who borrow money to eascpe to the Western World, women unable to have children who are judged by all, families seeing yet another young daughter marrying a man with AIDS who has already buried two wifes.
The themes are recurring: AIDS, deception, corruption, the black market and the ever increasing prices and political promises that can reck a nation.
I never read short stories one after another as I find that they merge into one another, but with this collection each character was held seperately in my mind, each life story complete in itself.
A collection I would definately recommend to others.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A lament for Zimbabwe, 21 Aug 2009
I sometimes don't get on very well with collections of short stories but these are long enough for the characters to be more developed and the stories to be more satisfying than others I've read. But several I thought would be even better developed as full length novels. They are about the lives of people in Zimbabwe, struggling to live with escalating inflation, where a loaf of bread costs half a million dollars, of corruption, scams, disappointed lives, unfulfilled dreams and broken promises. They paint a bleak picture of the resilence and resistance of people in extreme circumstances, coping with despair.

Something Nice From London is one of the most poignant tales. Relatives living in England often sent something special to their families back home but one family are waiting at Harare airport for something different - the arrival of Peter who died in London. His cousin, also living in England keeps promising his body will be on the flight. Peter was the golden boy and much was expected of him. This is the story of unfulfilled ambition and expection. Because you're not allowed to speak ill of the dead, the family have to forget how he bled them dry with constant demands for more money to pay his fees and provide accommodation and food as they mourn his death. Eventually the body does arrive, but not how they expected.

I also enjoyed Our Man in Geneva Wins a Million Euros, the story of a diplomat conned by an internet scam. In At the Sound of the Last Post, a politician's widow at her husband's funeral ponders the corrupt society they're living in as his collegues bury an empty coffin - her husband was not the national hero he was made out to be. Death and sickness figure quite prominently in most of the stories and the book as a whole, although laced through with ironic humour, is a lament - a lament for Zimbabwe and its suffering people.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Rivetting
A tottaly rivetting and beautifully written set of short stories about life in current Zimbabwe - worth a ton of journalists' 'special insight' reports. Read more
Published 4 months ago by William S. Torbitt

4.0 out of 5 stars An Elegy for easterly
Excellent, it was as good as i had hoped it owuld be. I gave it to my elderly mother and she enjoyed it also.
Published 5 months ago by M. Headicar

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterly debut
Petina Gappah's writing is so masterly that it is hard to believe that this is her debut collection of stories. Read more
Published 5 months ago by riverwillow

5.0 out of 5 stars Lamentation No!!! Reality Yes!!!
Almost every story in this book is a debate waiting to happen. Almost every story is a situation of reality of what it is to be a Zimbabwean who is still interested in home. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Tsoko

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