Taken individually as well as when assembled collectively, the short stories that comprise Petina Gappah’s debut collection, An Elegy for Easterly, offer a powerful lament for the Zimbabwe of Gappah’s childhood, a Zimbabwe that has all but disappeared behind the tragedies of totalitarianism, hyperinflation, corruption, crippling poverty, misogyny and an unchecked AIDS epidemic. Although, perhaps unsurprisingly considering the suffering that has been experienced in Zimbabwe, all of the stories are tinged by the twin spectres of death and despair, Gappah manages to provide moments of sparkling humour while at the same time highlighting the endurance and resilience that is shown both inspiringly and heartbreakingly by Zimbabweans today. An Elegy for Easterly has been rightly acclaimed; Gappah’s stories are a triumph of truth, tragedy and insight into a hugely misunderstood country.

All thirteen stories in An Elegy for Easterly are excellent, but there are several that particularly stand out. There are important and deadly secrets at play in most of Gappah’s tales; secrets, whether at a national or personal level, which everyone may well know but that no one will talk about. In ‘The Cracked, Pink Lips of Rosie’s Bridegroom’ guests at a wedding all notice the signs of AIDS to be seen in the bridegroom’s face. They know of his chequered sexual history and that being with him will ultimately prove the death of his bride, but none of them warn her. Many things are left unsaid in Gappah’s Zimbabwe. In ‘Something Nice from London’ Mary Chikwiro is sitting with her extended family at Harare airport waiting for the flight from London that will bring her brother Peter back to his family. It is common in Zimbabwe for families to eagerly await the gifts and much-needed foreign currency that relatives who have been abroad will bring them, but it eventually becomes clear that Peter will not be bringing his family anything; it is his body that is being flown back to them. While her elderly relatives stubbornly repeat the old adage that one mustn’t speak ill of the dead, Mary seethes in silent anger over the brother whose much-heralded trip to London brought the family nothing but heartache and impoverishment.

Although each of the stories in An Elegy for Easterly focuses on a different person or family, the figure of Robert Mugabe and the disastrous effects of his regime loom large in each tale. In ‘At the Sound of the Last Post’ a widow covertly observes the eyes of the President as he stands near to her, the guest of honour, at her husband’s grandiose state funeral. As she watches the empty coffin being buried and acknowledges to herself that her husband was no national hero, she muses on the corruption of the society in which she lives. This is the most obvious allusion to Mugabe, but each of the stories deal with the fallout from national corruption and international disinterest. Of course Gappah acknowledges that no person is all bad and so the disenchanted widow ultimately notices Mugabe for “the very old man that he is” and “unexpected pity wells up inside” her.

This acknowledgement that no one and nothing is wholly bad is also demonstrated by the occasional moments of success and humour that can be seen in An Elegy for Easterly. In ‘The Mupandawana Dancing Champion’ an elderly retired coffin maker’s friends and neighbours are astonished to discover his dancing prowess, while in ‘Our Man in Geneva Wins a Million Euros’ Gappah highlights the folly of falling for email scams by chronicling the misadventures of a diplomat who thinks he has lucked upon a sure thing. However, even these brief moments of joy are tempered by sadness.

An Elegy for Easterly is an excellent debut. Petina Gappah’s wonderful short stories are so powerful and poignant that they could be read many times over, with the reader discovering something new each time. The thirteen stories in the collection offer a disturbing insight into life under Robert Mugabe and provide a moving, humanised picture of lives that are lived behind the world-reaching newspaper headlines.

Read an extract and listen to an interview with the author on our sister site, Bookhugger.co.uk.

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