Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
The
Book of Memory
(2015)
Petina Gappah
(1971 – )
Notes
This novel was first published in 2015.
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36 Andy Dufresne:
The lead character in Frank Darabont's Oscar-nominated film The
Shawshank Redemption (1994) who escaped prison against incredible
odds.
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43 kani: Shona exclamation for "please" (Shona Dictionary)
60 Bellerephon's Chimera:
140 troll:
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204 Sidney Sussex:
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Comprehension Check 1
1
1
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Study Questions
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Vocabulary
point of view; first person
Review Sheet
Characters
Memory – "my favorite dress, a while lacy dress with a purple sash, my Christmas dress from the year before" (1); "the second child in a family of three" (13); "I had not expected that I would enjoy this. I am enjoying these words, crafting sentences, seeing paragraphs form" (84); "writing this is not as simple as I had imagined. I had thought that when I sat down to write, it would be to tell a linear story with a proper beginning, an ending and a middle" (85); "Years later, when I had begun to think of Lloyd and Poppy as my family and Summer Madness as my home" (143); "The Chimera no longer pulls me down to the water; it speaks no more with my mother's voice. I understand now that the dreams were not dreams, but faint imprints of buried trauma fighting memories of my mother" (260); "Vernah is still campaigning hard to have my sentence commuted to life, but that has not happened yet. Mavis Munongwa has found her own amnesty, which means that I am the only person left in the whole prison" (260); "We will know next week whether or not I will get a new trial" (267)Setting
Zimbabwe – "I came back to a country whose outlines I recognized, but which was different in the details. I had not been home in more than ten years. [...] All that had happened in my absence—the political paralysis, the economic collapse—had been nothing more to me than news headlines" (205)
Sample Student Responses to Petina Gappah's The Book of Memory
Response 1:
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Reference
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Zimbabwean Funerals
Shona Language
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Petina
Gappah |
Interviews
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Reference
Gappah, Petina. The Book of Memory. Faber and Faber, 2015.
Further
Reading
Gappah, Petina. An
Elegy for Easterly. Faber and Faber, 2009.
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Last updated March 29, 2018