Bücher von Petina Gappah

The story you have asked me to tell begins not with the ignominious ugliness of Lloyd's death but on a long-ago day in April when the sun seared my blistered face and I was nine years old and my father and mother sold me to a strange man. I say my father and my mother, but really it was just my mother. Memory, the narrator of The Book of Memory, is an albino woman languishing in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare, Zimbabwe, where she has been convicted of murder. As part of her appeal her lawyer insists that she write down what happened as she remembers it. The death penalty is a mandatory sentence for murder, and Memory is, both literally and metaphorically, writing for her life. As her story unfolds, Memory reveals that she has been tried and convicted for the murder of Lloyd Hendricks, her adopted father. But who was Lloyd Hendricks? Why does Memory feel no remorse for his death? And did everything happen exactly as she remembers? Moving between the townships of the poor and the suburbs of the rich, and between the past and the present, Memory weaves a compelling tale of love, obsession, the relentlessness of fate and the treachery of memory.

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 new job making coffins at No Matter Funeral Parlor brings unexpected riches; a politician's widow stands quietly by at her husband's funeral, watching his colleagues bury an empty casket. 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, where wives can't trust even their husbands for fear of AIDS, and 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, the Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah brings us the resilience and inventiveness of the people who struggle to live under Robert Mugabe's regime. She takes us across the city of Harare, from the townships beset by power cuts to the manicured lawns of privilege and corruption, where wealthy husbands keep their first wives in the "big houses" while their unofficial second wives wait in the "small houses," hoping for a promotion.Despite their circumstances, the characters in An Elegy for Easterly are more than victims-they are all too human, with as much capacity to inflict pain as to endure it. They struggle with the larger issues common to all people everywhere: failed promises, unfulfilled dreams, and the yearning for something to anchor them to life.

Ein großer Roman über ein unbekanntes Stück afrikanischer Kolonialgeschichte, fiktionalisiert zu einer spannenden Abenteuerreise - erzählt von einer der aufregendsten Stimmen unserer Gegenwart.Seit ihrer Jugend ist Petina Gappah von der Geschichte um David Livingstone besessen - dem berühmten schottischen Missionar und Afrikaforscher, der sich des großen geografischen Rätsels seiner Zeit verschrieben hatte, der Entdeckung der Nilquellen. Aus Faszination wurde ein Roman: Als Livingstone 1873 auf der Suche stirbt, will seine treue Gefolgschaft seinen Leichnam in seine Heimat zurückbringen. So machen sich 69 Gefährten auf den wagemutigen Weg, ihn quer durch Afrika zu tragen, angeführt von einer jungen Frau - Halima, Livingstones scharfzüngiger Köchin. Es ist eine abenteuerliche und lebensbedrohliche Reise über 1.000 Meilen, auf der ihnen Hunger, Krankheit und Tod begegnen - und immer wieder die Frage: Wie weit sind wir bereit für unsere Freiheit zu gehen?»>Aus der Dunkelheit strahlendes Licht< leiht denjenigen eine Stimme, die bislang bloße Fußnoten in der Geschichte waren, aber deren letzter, mutiger Akt der Loyalität maßgeblich ihren Lauf veränderte. Ein unglaubliches und wichtiges Werk einer meisterhaften Erzählerin.« Yaa Gyasi, Autorin von >HeimkehrenAlles Licht, das wir nicht sehen