An Elegy for Easterly
By Petina Gappah
Faber £12.99
FT Bookshop price: £10.39

American Rust
By Philipp Meyer
Simon & Schuster £12.99
FT Bookshop price: £10.39

Little Gods
By Anna Richards
Picador £16.99
FT Bookshop price: £10.59

Fiction rarely reveals the emotional realities behind the latest news headlines. But Petina Gappah’s An Elegy for Easterly does just that. The collection of 13 stories offers a moving and disturbing portrait of contemporary Zimbabwe. The difficulties of life under President Mugabe – insane inflation, cholera outbreaks, an Aids epidemic – are brought painfully to life.

All of Gappah’s characters are caught up in politics – from the compromised widow in “At the Sound of the Last Post”, who has to be bribed to stand next to Mugabe at her husband’s funeral, to the insurance salesman turned trillion-dollar black market trader in “Midnight at the Hotel California”.

Gappah’s tone is poignant and tender throughout. There are even flashes of wry humour, such as in “Something Nice from London”, when a young woman returning from the UK presents her struggling family with a tray decorated with English monarchs.

American Rust by Philipp Meyer is an elegiac portrait of a disintegrating society, set in the trailer parks of a dying steel town in Pennsylvania. Isaac is a budding physicist and the cleverest kid in town. Since his mother killed herself, he has looked after his ailing father. His unlikely best friend, Billy, is an aggressive former high-school jock. They plan to escape to California. But, hours into their escape, an encounter with some down-and-outs sees Isaac inadvertently seal both their fates.

On a lighter note, Anna Richards’ Little Gods is a wonderfully inventive ode to being different. Its heroine, the Cinderella-cum-giantess Jean Clocker, is of immense stature. Her wicked witch of a mother, Wisteria, treats her like a slave.

When the family home in a grey English seaside town is bombed in the second world war, Jean is the only survivor. War, perversely, is the making of her. Sexual awakening with a diminutive GI takes her to a new life in America. There, her adventures take a bizarre turn but, ultimately it’s her unique size that is her salvation. Richards’ fable provides a welcome relief from the modern obsession with petite femininity.