Rotten Row

Brilliant collection of short stories that draws upon Gappah's own expertise in international law (a story where an aid worker goes to Sierra Leone) and more 'ordinary' family and criminal cases, although as stories show, Zimbabwe's economic and political free fall has many different effects. Characters weave their way through multiple stories, and encounter chatrooms and Twitter as well as 'traditional' medicines for infidelity and concerns about brideprice. Laced with humour and a playfulness with multiple languages. Recommended.

These dark little stories, often comic, are set around Rotten Row, Zimbabwe's Criminal Division, and centre on the people who work there, and those who for good reasons and bad pass through. There was much to enjoy. Clever characterisations, clever changes of voice ('From a Town Called Enkeldoorn' is entirely written as comments on a web forum, for instance), and above all, the introduction to each story with a quote from the Bible, written in Shona (I love 'Buku yaMuprofita Jeremia' - that's 'The Book of Jeremiah' to you) make these stories, often of an underclass, to be page turners. In the end though, some of these tales got a bit samey-samey and I didn't finish the book. I would if I had my own copy, by picking the stories up again show more from time to time. But it's from the library, and they want it back. show less

Superlative short stories, with the tapestry becoming richer as characters recur.