Rotten Row

In her accomplished new story collection, Petina Gappah crosses the barriers of class, race, gender and sexual politics in Zimbabwe to explore the causes and effects of crime, and to meditate on the nature of justice. Rotten Row represents a leap in artistry and achievement from the award-winning author of An Elegy for Easterly and The Book of Memory. With compassion and humour, Petina Gappah paints portraits of lives aching for meaning to produce a moving and universal tableau.

Petina Gappah is an international lawyer and writer who was born in Kitwe, Zambia and raised in Zimbabwe. She is the author of An Elegy for Easterly, The Book of Memory and Rotten Row. Her work has shortlisted for, among others, the Orwell Prize, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the PEN America Open Book Award and the Prix Femina (Étrangers). She is the 2009 recipient of the Guardian First Book Award and the 2016 recipient of the McKitterick Prize from the Society of Authors. Having spent more than a decade working as an international trade lawyer in Geneva, Petina now divides her time between Harare and Berlin, where she is a fellow of the DAAD Berliner Kunstlerprogramm.