Trade lawyer impresses critics and readers alike with 'disarmingly funny' short stories of Zimbabwe
Mark Brown, art correspondent , guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 2 December 2009
Left - Petina Gappah has won the Guardian First Book Award with her short stories on life in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe. Photograph: Sarah Lee
A Geneva-based international trade lawyer whose poignant, humane and funny collection of stories about her home country, Zimbabwe, has impressed critics was tonight named winner of the Guardian First Book Award.
Petina Gappah became only the second short story writer to win the award in its 1
0-year history, the first being Yiyun Li in 2006. Gappah's collection of 13 stories, An Elegy for Easterly, tells of the lives of people, rich and poor, caught up in events over which they have little control.The Guardian's literary editor, Claire Armitstead, who chaired the judging panel, said she was thrilled to name Gappah as winner, particularly since 2009 is the year of the short story. There had been some wonderful first books, she said, and "Petina Gappah's humane and disarmingly funny mosaic of life in Zimbabwe is undoubtedly one of the very best."
The Guardian award is unique in that it gives a vote to the collective voice of reading groups, organised by Waterstone's at branches in Bath, Oxford, Edinburgh, Leeds and London. The book chain's Stuart Broom was the readers' representative on the panel and he said: "There is a quietness, humour and charm to this book that resonated with the Waterstone's reading groups. Many readers commented on the delicate simplicity of the stories, which belies the fact that a number of the short stories explore very harsh political realities. It's going to be fascinating to see what Gappah does next as a writer."
The answer to that is that she is working on her first novel, called The Book of Memory, which Gappah said was about "jealousy and obsession and the triumph of evil over good".
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