The year that was and what a year it was

2009 was not the best year for Petina Gappah the person: I went through some rather horrible and painful stuff that is best forgotten. What I will focus on is 2009 as a terrific year for Petina Gappah the writer: it being, in case you missed it (and how could you, when I was shouting about it from every rooftop) the year that An Elegy for Easterly, my first book, was published.

When the year began, I was nervous and excited. I had a calender in which I crossed off the days to April, when the book was to be published. Then April came, and it was not the cruellest month of my nightmares. The book was published, to, as they say, critical acclaim. I then had the surreal experience of travelling around the world and seeing it everywhere. Everyone I knew, it seemed, was reading it. Everyone but me.

I had last read my book at the proofreading stage in November 2008, and I was afraid to read it again after it was published in case I found that I could have written a particular sentence better, or chosen a different and better word. So I read only those bits that I had to read as part of my promotional activities. Only two weeks ago, after I won the Guardian First Book Award, did I read it again from cover to cover in one sitting. More on this re-reading anon.

What surprised me this year where the reviews. I found it difficult to believe that this book, this accidental book, was a book that serious people were taking seriously. And I was amused by the comparisons: I was compared to all manner of writers including VS Naipaul, Chekhov and Zora Neale Hurston, all very flattering, if a little hyperbolic.

One of the reasons that I am so insistent that my work be judged on its merits, and not on my identity as an "African writer" is that I sometimes get the uneasy sense that there is a sort of affirmative action in publishing, that work by writers of colour is not examined critically, it is examined mainly in terms of the "authenticity" and identity of the writer. There is something that feels like the unconsious racism of lowered expectations, where something that should be judged on its merits is judged instead on whether it is "authentic". I was worried, therefore, by the reviews that seemed to focus more on the fact that the stories are about Zimbabwe, than on whether they are any good.

Mercifully, there were not too many of these, but you will understand how happy I am to read again and again my favourite review which came from a writer I hold in the highest esteem, a writer who focused not on the Zimbabweanness of my stories but on my craft as a writer. In a thoughtful and considered review essay on the short story, James Lasdun gave me a lot to think about. He very correctly said my book was uneven, which it absolutely is. Best of all, he confirmed for me that I can do this, that I should follow the instinct that tells me that the short story, the lonely and sometimes arid field that it is, is worth ploughing.

Which takes me to re-reading my book. I reread it two weeks ago, with all the reviews in mind. I was pleased to see that I have nothing to be ashamed of, that I have a book that I can defend. Some of the stories are flawed, and I see what I could have done better, but obviously, I cannot rewrite them now to make them better. I can build on them, however, and with what I have learned from the critics, and from readers, I can eliminate some weaknesses. Every writer, I think, knows what they do best, and I am really pleased to have my strengths confirmed: my ability to take on any voice, my interest in everything and everyone, my ability to both move and amuse. So I will take all I have learnt this year in the hope of becoming a better writer, or at least, in the hope that the next book will be better than the first.

I ended the year as well as I began it, on top of that wonderful award, to my very great delight, I made a number of Best of 2009 lists. The one listing that moved me the most, the one that I will print out and put on my fridge and look at in cases of future writerly angst and doubt is this, from NPR's best of debut fiction for 2009:

Gappah is an earthy, evocative stylist, with a startling range of storytelling styles. "Hotel California" unfolds as a tale within a tale, while "The Negotiated Settlement," one of the more moving stories within the collection, lays bare a marriage in beautiful imagery. "First you undo me this scar," says the narrator's wife, "then we can talk about divorce." A writer who can strike bone this solidly can tell us just about anything.

It is strange and beautiful when someone, a perfect stranger, looks into your soul and reveals what you suspected about yourself but were too unsure to voice. This reviewer has seen what I always believed about myself, but never had the confidence to say: I believe that I can write about anything I put my mind to. Anything at all. In anyone's voice. I am going to spend the rest of my life proving it, if only to myself.

But that is for the long term: for now, I want to say thank you all for being with me on my amazing adventure as a writer in this last year. I hide it well, but for the most part, I have been wracked with nerves and doubt. I am pleased that I had this blog, that I had you, my readers and my good friends, with your cheery good wishes and your generosity. Please join me next year as I update you on my next book, and on my new stories, which I promise to make even better than those in Easterly. Happy new year, near and dear ones, far and wide!

A very merry Christmas to all of you, and a Happy New Year

I am off to the mountains for Christmas, where I intend to do nothing but read and eat and read. I hope all my wonderful blog readers have happy happy holidays. I am back to Geneva on Monday, where I have a pile of work to go through before the year ends, so the break will be a short one. See you after Christmas, and remember, don't drink and drive, but smoke and fly!

What I really want for Christmas is Too Much Money

I may have to wait until the new year to get what I want for Christmas because it is nowhere to be seen in Geneva: Too Much Money, the new novel by Dominick Dunne. His novels are a hoot, and this one is a treat. I read the first chapter in this month's Vanity Fair, he takes the roman a clef to new levels, he does, the disguises here are so thin he might as well have used the real names of Edmond and Lily Safra, poor Brooke Astor and others. Nothing will ever be as good as the Kennedine A Season In Purgatory, which is my favourite Dunne, but Too Much Money promises to be a fun fun read, and I want it badly. By the way, I am really glad now that I did not recycle all my old Vanity Fairs. Graydon, darling, if you are reading this, and why wouldn't you be, here is an idea: Vanity Fair should put together in one book all of Dominick Dunne's writing for Vanity Fair. That's what I want next Christmas.

My fourteen favourite books of the year for 2009

This year, I had the wonderful experience of meeting some of the writers whose books I read, and that invariably influenced how much I liked their books. So here they are, my books of 2009.

1. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and Granta). I read a huge number of short story collections this year, and this has to be my favourite. I loved the wild inventiveness and the cracking humour in these sometimes risky stories which are definitely not your average cookie-cutter MFA stories. And you have to hunt down an audio link of Wells reading from the book, there is nothing like a story about pillaging Vikings being read in a(n American) Southern accent.

2. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin (Viking). Hands down, the best novel I read this year. I had the unique privilege of hearing Colm read the first chapter at a festival in Galway in Ireland, so when I read the rest of the book, I had his voice in my mind. I kept asking myself why this bitter but funny and intensely introspective novel reminded of Jane Austen, and then I saw him on Newsnight Review the week I got back to Geneva saying he was inspired to write a Jane Austen-like book. I loved this book so much that I have read it three times this year: it is a book I will continue to enjoy as a reader, and one I will learn from as a writer, as it comes as close as possible to being a perfect novel.

3. Harare North by Brian Chikwava (Jonathan Cape). I loved this intensely funny novel. I am not sure that the non-Zimbabweans will ever understand just how funny it is as there are a lot of in jokes and popular cultural references that only the inhabitants of the land between the Zambezi and the Limpopo will get. Everyone I have talked to has read this has enjoyed it tremendously. There is a scene set at a concert that alone is worth the cover price. Stupendous.

4. Angels and Ages by Adam Gopnik (Knopf). 2009 was 200th anniversary of the births of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. This beautifully-written book is about these two men, born on the same day an ocean apart, who in their different ways had a profound impact on how we see and understand the world. If a book can be accused of being too well written it would be this one; it took me a longer time than usual to read it because each sentence is so beautiful that it actually distracts you from moving to the next. Stunning.

5. Old Possum's Book Of Practical Cats, by TS Eliot (Faber). This was the first Faber book I ever read, and has remained a perennial favourite. I love the new version published this year to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Eliot's wonderful poems and Faber's 80th birthday. This version features the work of Axel Scheffler, the German illustrator who is one half of the creative team that gave the world the Gruffalo. This is one book my son Kush thinks belongs to him but is actually mine.

Other books I really enjoyed were Burnt Shadows, by Kamila Shamsie (Bloomsbury), who shows that it is possible to research a book really well and not make a book be about the research (and yes, Ian McEwan, I am looking at you:) It's Our Turn To Eat by Michela Wrong (Fourth Estate), a brilliant dissection of corruption in Kenya by a journalist who always treats African subjects as normal people who are, like every one else, a mix of good and bad (and yes, Ryszard Kapuscinski, I am looking at you) and The Selected Works of TS Spivet by Reif Larsen (Penguin), the most enjoyably inventive of all the books I read this year.

There are many other books I enjoyed that were not published this year, but that I only read this year, particularly, Murambi the Book of Bones, by Boubacer Boris Diop, Joe Cinque's Consolation, by Helen Garner, the first two volumes of the collected stories of W Somerset Maugham and A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh. Kush and I have also enjoyed hugely the new version of Rudyard Kipling's Just So stories published by Walker Books and featuring well-known book illustrators from around the world.

Miss McConkey of Bridgewater Close and David Scobie's "Gypsey Girl"

"When I saw her yesterday, Miss McConkey looked vital and frail at the same time, like a cross between Doris Lessing and poor, murdered Cora Lansquenet. She stood in the queue for the only cashier inside the OK supermarket that replaced the Bon Marché at Mabelreign shopping centre. She carried her head as she always had done, slightly tilted to the left, and her hair, all white now, was pinned into a large bun at the top of her head. When I was a little girl, her hair reminded me of Mam'zelle's at Mallory Towers. Not Mam'zelle Rougier, who was thin and sour and never any fun, but Mam'zelle Dupont, who was plump and jolly."

These are the opening lines of a new story I wrote exclusively for the Guardian, it is called Miss McConkey of Bridgewater Close and goes back to the time that I find most interesting to write about, the move from settler rule to majority rule and the early days of independence. I am interested in exploring how independence materially changed lives, especially for the blacks who made it to the suburbs and whose children found themselves in the alien territory of formerly whites-only schools.

In the story, the parents of the narrator celebrate their new house with a party at which they dance to Gypsey Girl by David Scobie. For those who do not know, he was one of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe's early rock stars. Okay, so he did not exactly scream rock star, so he tucked his tight shirt into his tight belted jeans and looked like a wholesome and healthy farmer's boy on an exeat weekend jaunt, but he was our rock star, damn it, and we loved him. Here is the song for those who do not know it, and for those who do, be prepared for a few tears because in the video, the jacarandas are blooming on Africa Unity Square, the fountains are working, and there are no potholes on First Street. You really can't go home again. You can only remember.

Laila Lalami on "The New Inquisition"

I admire greatly Laila Lalami's incisive and clear writing. Her blog is one of the best in the business, always up to date, and always interesting. She is a voracious, even gluttonous reader, and she is also a fellow Coetzeeirite, or should that be Coetzeenista? I must have read most of her essays by now, she writes particularly well of that liberal middle class prejudice that arises from the sometimes unconscious and occasionally racist assumptions of people who are otherwise good and well-intentioned, but never see a person of colour as an equal, but always as a problem or a project, you know, as someone to be aided, tolerated or, the worst yet, understood. Laila has written two books: the short story collection Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, and the novel Secret Son. She is currently working on another novel, but if I were her publisher, I would get her to do a Zadie and publish her essays, because they are really good. Here is the beggining of one I particularly like:

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At a literary festival in New York City some years ago, I was introduced to a French writer who, almost immediately after we shook hands, asked me where I was from. When the answer was “Morocco,” he put down his drink and stared at me with anthropological curiosity. We spoke about literature, of course, and discovered a common love for the work of the South African writer J.M. Coetzee, but before long the conversation had turned to Moroccan writers, then to Moroccan writers in France, and then, as I expected it eventually would, to Moroccan immigrants in France–at which point the French writer declared, “If they were all like you, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

His tone suggested he was paying me some sort of compliment, though I found it odd that he would want the 1 million Moroccans in his country to be carbon copies of someone he had barely met and whose views on immigration–had he asked about them–he might not have found quite to his liking. It was only later, when I had returned to my hotel room, that it dawned on me that the profile of the unproblematic Moroccan immigrant he might have had in mind was based solely on conspicuous things. Some of these, like skin color, were purely accidental; others, like sartorial choices or dietary practices, were in my opinion inessential, but from his vantage point perhaps they suggested a smaller degree of “Muslimness.”

Was this man really suggesting that I was a more desirable immigrant because I did not look Muslim? We had started our conversation as two equals, two potential friends, two writers discussing literature, but we had ended it as judge and supplicant–the former telling the latter whether or not she would make a suitable immigrant. And why on earth did I not say something on the spot? Why did I not ask him what he meant? Instead, I had stared back at him with what I imagine was dumbfounded perplexity, and then changed the subject. Perhaps if I had confronted him I would have been able to remove the sting of the insult that had lain hidden inside the compliment.

Read more at The Nation.

"Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation"

"The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice."  

As the Copenhagen summit on climate change begins, 56 newspapers around the world will, for the first time in history, publish the same editorial.  Follow this link to read the full editorial as it will appear in different languages around the world. The editorial is today's front page of the Guardian, which led the initiative. 

Image: Guardian. 

"An Elegy for Easterly" wins the Guardian First Book Award

I woke up on the morning after the Big Night to find more than 150 notifications on my Facebook page. Thank you to all of you for almost crashing Facebook, and to the many people who have emailed, and who have left comments on this blog. I am happy and inspired and not a little dazed.

I love the Guardian. No day has gone by in the last 15 years without me reading it. I have had one comment piece published in the Guardian (and two online). That comment piece is framed in my living room, because getting into the Guardian was major milestone for me. So being associated now with this award is beyond incredible. I am thrilled beyond words.

I said in my acceptance speech that there is an entire team behind my book, from my agent Claire, the team at Faber, my family around the world, and the many friends who have acted as unpaid publicists. I am overwhelmed by all the love and support. So if I may, I dedicate this win to all of you, my friends and readers. I should also probably give you all the prize money, but there is a problem: there are too many of you to make this meaningful, so instead, I am keeping every penny:)

I will be in hibernation for the next three days, and will resume blogging on Monday with a searing essay from the fantastic Laila Lalami.

In which my voice stars in Nikita Diakur's promotional campaign for the BBC World Service

Now here is something that has me grinning without end. I have done a lot of promotional interviews on BBC radio and television, which have helped me to reach thousands of readers, so I am really happy to be in a position to give something back to dear Auntie. I am featured in an advert currently running on terrestrial television in the United Kingdom to promote the World Service. I had an interview on The Strand with Harriet Gilbert back in April, in which I told her about this random man off the street who tried to prevent me from taking pictures of Cleveland House in Leopold Takawira Street where the Harare City Council's Department of Works has its offices, and where, incidentally, I had my first ever job while waiting to go to university. According to the BBC, the anecdote I told inspired filmmaker Nikita Diakur to help create a new and funky television campaign for the BBC World Service. It is a dazzling piece from a great talent. I am talking of course about Nikita, not me. Watch it below.