Reading to Chamunorwa Nebeta and the Glare Express on The Strand

I listened to my interview on the BBC World Service's The Strand with Harriet Gilbert this morning and found myself in floods of tears. No, no, it was not that bad. Really.

Here is what happened when I went in last Monday. Harriet asked me to read from everyone's favourite story, The Mupandawana Dancing Champion. I read from the passage that says "And then Felicitas put on Chamunorwa Nebeta and the Glare Express. As the first strains of Tambai Mese Mujairirane filled the room, we saw M'dhara Vitalis transformed."

Then, as I listened to the interview this morning, I had the most wonderful surprise. The Strand team had somehow managed to get hold of this most obscure of Zimbabwean bands ... and as I read, the strains of Tambai Mese Mujairirane filled the room. This was just the most moving and wonderful thing. I used that song for M'dhara Vita's winning dance because it is my father's favourite song, and it reminds me of how much he loved dancing to it before he had his stroke. To Harriet and the team at The Strand, thank you for a wonderful interview and a wonderful memory. You can listen to it here.

UPDATE: I have just talked to my father who has reminded me that Chamunorwa Nebeta died tragically young, at the age of 35, in 2007.  Lord love you, Chamunorwa, wherever you are. I still get a kick out of the name of his band, the Glare Express;  the joke, to those who are not in the know, is that Chamunorwa was blind.   

They write what they like - Melissa de Villiers on new Zimbabwean fiction

Something to cheer about:   Melissa de Villiers, a London-based  South African, has published an article in the Sunday Times of South Africa that makes wonderful reading for anyone seeking to establish what makes the new generation of Zim writers different from the old.  And she also focuses on writers in Zim as well as in the diaspora. 

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These fresh voices represent the advent of a new generation, a changing of the guard: the writers are among the “born frees”, who came of age after independence in 1980. Mostly in their 20s and 30s, educated and well travelled, they represent a different viewpoint in so far as they are not pre-occupied with Zimbabwe’s liberation war and see themselves as part of a wider world.

And while they appreciate the tragedy of the Zimbabwean situation, they are able to distance themselves from it in recognition of its many absurdities.

“These are writers who don’t take our elderly politicians as seriously as they demand to be taken — they don’t see respect for their elders as a given, but rather that they, too, must earn their right to act on behalf of the people, and be judged accordingly,” says Irene Staunton of Zimbabwe’s Weaver Press, which has been instrumental in publishing many of the new writers and fostering a sense of community. “And the confidence they have in their own perspective lends strength to their writing.”

These authors are not the first to openly condemn the shortcomings of Mugabe’s regime. Internationally acclaimed novelists like Yvonne Vera and Chenjerai Hove long ago pre-empted the country’s current crisis. But “the recent work of older writers like Vera and Hove is couched in densely experimental prose, making it more difficult for readers to follow”, says Dr Ranka Primorac, author of The Place of Tears: The Novel and Politics in Modern Zimbabwe. “These younger writers are more direct, and often make use of shorter forms as well as novels.”

Another sign of the changed times is that little of the subject matter of this new Zimbabwean fiction is directly political. Unlike the writing of the post-independence generation of writers such as Tsitsi Dangarembga, who wrestled with neo-colonialism and the post-independence politics of betrayal, most of these stories are street-level examinations of Zimbabwean life. This retreat from a prescriptive, ideological stance is perhaps reflective of a generation of writers grown cynical of the redemptive possibilities of politics.

Read more here.

An Elegy at The Ivy

Here is a picture of my book on top of the piano in the Private Room of the tres chic London restaurant The Ivy.  There were no paparazzi to be seen the night we were there, I guess they knew that our party was made up only of writers, publicists, booksellers and editors:) 

Valerie Tagwira reflects on the 2009 "Time of the Writer Festival"

Valerie Tagwira is the  Zimbabwean writer of The Uncertainty of Hope.  In an interview with African Writing which will be posted soon, I said that Valerie is one of the writers I admire - she is a medical doctor as well as a writer who wrote her first novel while studying for her OB/GNY boards. I have tremendous respect for writers like PD James, John Mortimer, Scott Turow, etc, who  managed to combine their writing with demanding professions. 

I recently asked Valerie to write a guest contribution to this blog and she kindly agreed.  So here she is, with some reflections on her participation at the Time of the Writer festival in South Africa.  

The photo of Valerie (in yellow) with South African Karabo Kgoleng (in purple) and Nigerian Sade Adeniran (with the seriously funky afro) appears with her permission. 

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In March, I was one of 20 writers invited to attend the 12^th Time of the Writer Festival in Durban, South Africa. The event ran from 9-14 March and was hosted by The Centre for Creative Arts, University of KwaZulu Natal.  It was a fun-filled, educational and informative week, during which I interacted with experienced writers from other countries.

Events included newspaper, radio and TV interviews; book launches, forums and discussions held at various venues in Durban, including prisons, schools and youth centres. These events were organised and coordinated by a team from The University of KwaZulu Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts and all participants had scheduled participation 

I was very impressed by the amount of talent shown by school pupils in two Creative Writing Clubs that I visited during the festival.  

The forum that I enjoyed most was: "African Women Writers: Where are we now?". This was held at the historical Ike’s Books and Collectables bookshop. It was attended by female participants of the festival and was open to the public.  We discussed our experiences and my contribution included the advantages and disadvantages that I had as a Zimbabwean writer writing from outside the country, when compared with my fellow women writers writing from within Zimbabwe.

I also attended panel discussions and book launches that were held in the evenings at The Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre at the university campus. A highlight was the announcement of the 2009 winners of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book and Best First Book Africa Region. The prize for best book went to one of the festival's participants, Mandla Langa of South Africa for his novel , The Lost Colours of The Chameleon .

My panel discussion was co-chaired with Sade Adeniran (Nigeria), 2008 winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book Africa Region. The facilitator was Karabo Kgoleng, a SAFM radio journalist who has special interest in literature and the arts. Our topic of was: "Writing Home’’. We discussed a series of questions presented by  the facilitator.

The  discussion, which was open to the public, centred on the concept of home, one of the themes that are explored in my novel The Uncertainty of Hope and Sade Adeniran’s Imagine This. Issues discussed included questions about what makes up a place that someone calls home, factors that give somebody security within the home, identity and home, how “tribal identity” may factor into a sense of home, the type of security provided by a home for the characters in our novels and whether people who have been dispossessed can ever re-create a home. We also talked about  the challenges of writing about ‘’home’ while living abroad.

An important question raised by another writer in the audience was why we wrote in English and not in our native tongues. My response to that was that I write in English to reach out to a wider audience. Writing in Shona, which is my native language would restrict the audience that I can reach. I suggested translation of English novels into vernacular where funds are available.

All in all it was a wonderful week, and I came back to England feeing inspired to become a much better writer.

Brilliant Review of "Easterly" in The Observer

I had a wonderful time at my Free the Word! festival event on Saturday. I will blog about it some time this week, but in the meantime, I am thrilled to share with you this fantastic review of my book that was published in today's Observer. Here is some of it.

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Again and again, Gappah reveals the hypocrisy of Zimbabwean society, and it is frequently women who suffer most. "The Maid From Lalapanzi" is about a young woman who commits suicide after she is cast out of the household she has served for two years. "This is what happens when you try to help these girls," says the narrator's aunt.

But Gappah is interested both in those who wrong and those who are wronged. In "The Negotiated Settlement" she sensitively inhabits the viewpoints of both an unfaithful husband and his wife. "In the Heart of the Golden Triangle" is a brief evisceration of the life of a rich, jaded housewife living in an exclusive area of Harare; the portrait is both moving and incisive.

"More and more I have come to admire resilience," begins the epigraph, a poem by Jane Hirshfield. Yet sometimes laughter is the only form of resilience Petina Gappah's characters can manage, and it is the frequent humour in these stories that makes them remarkable, even if their outcomes can be tragic. Often satirical, occasionally lyrical, they are a delight.

Read the rest here.

Nhasi ndezvedu: The launch of "Easterly" in the media

Calling all Londoners, there is a lovely interview and a great picture of me taken by the talented Bathsheba Okwenje in today's London Metro, the free underground paper, by which I mean the daily newspaper distributed on the London underground and not some sort of revolutionary secret rag.  It is a great interview, I enjoyed talking to Tina Jackson tremendously, but there is one disclaimer: I know I laughed a lot during the interview, but I did not "giggle", me, not once:)

If you are unable to read the interview on Metro, NewZimbabwe.com has published the piece here. I am really happy to have the publicity extend to Zimbabwe, The Zimbabwean on Sunday will cover the launch, as will SW Radio, and yes, I will also be in The Herald. Zimbabwe's own Pravda has been a good friend to me, indeed, of all the  Zimbabwean newspapers, it has been my biggest fan. I am always amused by the coverage that I get from them because, with incredible sleight of hand, they manage to cover my activities without actually writing down the dastardly truth of what my stories are about:) 

And to those in the UK, the PEN event in which I take part on Saturday is  featured in this week's Time Out. Easterly is featured in the May issues of the magazines Vogue (UK),  Psychologies and Good Housekeeping.  The blitz will continue into the weekend, The Observer will publish a review on Sunday, and next week, I have an essay that will be published in The Guardian Saturday review, an interview in The Guardian the following Monday and on Sunday 28 April, the Sunday Times magazine will run one of my stories.

I am also incredibly nervous because on Monday 20 April 2009, I will be on Start the Week with Andrew Marr on BBC Radio 4, and on 21 April 2009, I will be interviewed by George Alagiah on BBC World news at 12pm.  Ahead of my appearance later in the week at the Cuirt literary festival in Galway, I will also be interviewed on the Arts Show on Ireland's Radio 1. If you do catch me on the news, please note that my face is really not that round, it is only that the camera adds simply pounds and pounds. And pounds.

Thanks again to the many friends and readers who sent me congratulatory messages on this blog, on Facebook and by email.  I will keep you posted on the events next week so check here for updates.  Ndatenda veduweeeeeeee. 

It is real ... "An Elegy for Easterly" is now out

So I walk into Payot, my local chain bookstore at lunchtime, intending to buy Wells Tower's story collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. I head straight for the new fiction shelves, and there is the book I want. I look around some more, browsing idly, and I am suddenly hit by the triumphant purple cover of my own book. It comes out officially tommorrow, 16 april,  and I had not expected to see it just lying there like any other real book a day before it is published.  I am completely unprepared for it, and I have, as you can imagine, a bit of an emotional meltdown.

I have written an essay for the Guardian, it will be published within the fortnight, in which I reflect on the combination of factors that made me a lawyer and a writer. In that essay, I recall that the first novel, poems and stories that I wrote as a child were taken for rubbish by the man who helped my father in the garden. 

He made a nice little bonfire of my writing. 

What do you want to be when you grow up? people would ask in that annoying way adults condescend to children.

A ballerina. 

A vet. 

An explorer. 

These were my early ambitions.

I never actually thought of being a writer. It did not seem like a real thing to be, somehow. I was probably a daft kid, but I honestly did not know that writing could be a job, an occupation. All I knew was that I loved to make up stories as much as I loved to read. Reading and writing were linked, and it would never have occured to me as a ten year old that reading could be a job.

It was just what I did, I read, and I wrote. 

I could not have seen that this love for reading and telling stories would lead me towards a moment of meltdown in a Geneva bookshop. 

Or that the moment would involve Faber.

I remember reading my first Faber book. 

It was William Golding's Lord of the Flies. I was 15, and I borrowed it from my friend Catherine Machingaidze. It was the Eng. Lit. set book for their year, but not for ours. I was intrigued by the title.  I read it, and as I finished it, I cried with Ralph as we remembered the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy and all I wanted to do was to throw up.  St Dominic's, though, only gave you just enough food to be absorbed into the  body, so there was nothing to throw up, but the book unsettled me so much that I dreamt about it that night.  I looked for more William Golding at the library during the school holidays, I found Fire Down Below and Rites of Passage, but they did not do to me what Lord of the Flies did.  It is still one of my favourite books.

And with the publication of Easterly, I have joined Golding as a Faber author.  

Let me stop before I have another meltdown.  

An Easter Miracle Everyone! America's (Secret!) Muslim President hosts a Passover Seder!

See how cleverly I referenced the three major religions of the Middle East in that title? With not a little effort, peace and co-existence can be ours in our lifetime. In the meantime, happy Easter and/or Passover, dear readers:  as they are both a commemoration of a violent happening, I should probably hold the happy, but you know what I mean. 

Photo credit: The Huffington Post.  

James Lasdun on the short story and on "An Elegy for Easterly"

I love James Lasdun, who must surely be one of the very best contemporary writers of the short story. I am eternally grateful that I began to subscribe to Prospect three years ago, which is how I came across his work.  Here he is talking about short stories, and about winning the UK National Short Story competition three years ago.  He is always someone you can learn from. 

This last Saturday in the Guardian Review, he wrote a thoughtful and incisive review essay on the short story and in which he assessed the debuts of five writers: Sana Krasikov, whose book has received rave reviews, including from short story maestress Yiyun Li, Daniyal Mueenuddin, whose book I have been promoting on this blog, Chimamanda Adichie who needs no introduction, Wells Tower whose collection, with the awesome title "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned", is published by Granta and yours truly. I am really pleased that he liked my book, which he said had "great charm". Then there is the whole comparison to Chekhov and the humour thing and how my stories handle heavy subjects but are told with a light touch, and how they are true to the essential nature of the short story. But I will let you read the whole thing yourselves while I go off to smirk smirkily and preen preeningly. 

Seriously though, I learned a lot from this essay, and I encourage all lovers of the short story to read and reflect on it. 

International PEN's Free the Word! Festival, London 16-19 April 2009

I hope to see London readers of this blog at the Free the Word! festival in London. My event will be on 18 April 2009, which is also, in a happy coincidence, the anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence. I will be on a panel chaired by Kamila Shamsie. 

Here is the panel as described by International PEN: 

"A sold-out event last year, ‘International Futures' is back to celebrate the eminent writers of tomorrow. Kamila Shamsie, the acclaimed author of numerous novels including her latest, Burnt Shadows, talks on the subject of heaven and earth with some of the brightest contemporary international voices whose work already heralds stellar international futures: Bertrand Besigye (Norway), Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe) and Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih (India)."

I first saw Ms Shamsie at the British Council Cambridge Seminar in 2005, when I was dreaming of being a writer, and I certainly never imagined then that she would chair a panel in which I was a participant.  The event will be at  Shakespeare's Globe, in the "Underglobe", a room that appears to have the rather daunting capacity to hold 400 people. Please come along and hold my trembly hand.  

For more details on the festival, see the  news feature below, from the Bookseller. 

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World literature festival ‘Free the Word!’ featuring writers from around the globe and organised by International PEN is to return to London for its second anniversary.The festival will take place at venues across Shakespeare’s Globe, Southwark Playhouse and the Young Vic from 16th-19th April this year. The event is being sponsored by Bloomberg and supported by the Arts Council England.

The festival will feature world writers such as Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer, Mexican journalist and human rights activist, Lydia Cacho, and Iranian novelist and academic Azar Nafisi. Other emerging voices include Petina Gappah, a new talent from Zimbabwe, Czech writer Tomáš Zmeškal and French author Florian Zeller.

For the first time the event will have work and events for children and their families, which will come under the heading ‘Felt Pen’. Free the Word! will also present the first public performance of Malawian writer and poet, Jack Mapanje’s, debut play The President’s Tobacco.

Sir Tom Stoppard, International PEN author advocate, said the event was an opportunity to, "make sparks across the divide between national literatures".

Guantànamo Bay: so relaxing, so calm, soooo beautiful!!!

From Dayana Mendoza,the reigning Miss Universe, comes this glowing blog post about Guantànamo Bay. Her country's President, Hugo Chavez, will be thrilled!

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This week, Guantánamo!!! It was an incredible experience.

We arrived in Gitmo on Friday and stared going around the town, everybody knew Crystle and I were coming so the first thing we did was attend a big lunch and then we visited one of the bars they have in the base. We talked about Gitmo and what is was like living there. The next days we had a wonderful time, this truly was a memorable trip! We hung out with the guys from the East Coast and they showed us the boat inside and out, how they work and what they do, we took a ride around the land and it was a loooot of fun!

We also met the Military dogs, and they did a very nice demonstration of their skills. All the guys from the Army were amazing with us.

We visited the Detainees camps and we saw the jails, where they shower, how the recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books. It was very interesting.

We took a ride with the Marines around the land to see the division of Gitmo and Cuba while they were informed us with a little bit of history.

The water in Guantánamo Bay is soooo beautiful! It was unbelievable, we were able to enjoy it for at least an hour. We went to the glass beach, and realized the name of it comes from the little pieces of broken glass from hundred of years ago. It is pretty to see all the colors shining with the sun. That day we met a beautiful lady named Rebeca who does wonders with the glasses from the beach. She creates jewelry with it and of course I bought a necklace from her that will remind me of Guantánamo Bay :)

I didn’t want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful.