The book of memory
By: Petina Gappah
Edition: First American edition.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 276
ISBN-13: 9780865479074
Subjects: Women prisoners; Zimbabwean fiction; Albinos and albinism; Fiction
Description: Memory, the narrator of Petina Gappah's The Book of Memory, is an albino woman languishing in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare, Zimbabwe, after being sentenced for murder. As part of her appeal, her lawyer insists that she write down what happened as she remembers it. The death penalty is a mandatory sentence for murder, and Memory is, both literally and metaphorically, writing for her life. As her story unfolds, Memory reveals that she has been tried and convicted for the murder of Lloyd Hendricks, her adopted father. But who was Lloyd Hendricks? Why does Memory feel no remorse for his death? And did everything happen exactly as she remembers?