Petina Gappah was born in 1971 in Kitwe, in the Copperbelt province of Zambia, but she grew up in Zimbabwe. She finished school at St. Ignatius College, near Harare, and took her first degree in law at the University of Zimbabwe. Gappah holds a Masters degree from the University of Cambridge and a doctorate in international trade law from the University of Graz, Austria, and has been based in Geneva, Switzerland since 1998, working as a lawyer and legal advisor. In 2009, Gappah’s first book of short stories,
Elegy for Easterly, was published, and since then Gappah has released two more works of fiction: a novel,
The Book of Memory, in 2015; and another short story collection,
Rotten Row, in 2016. Each of these works is set in Zimbabwe, and they deal with the social and economic…
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Citation: Brits, Baylee. "Petina Gappah". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 July 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13748, accessed 21 November 2024.]