Petina Gappah grew up in Zimbabwe during segregation, when black girls were not thought worthy of education.
Despite this, she became a lawyer and was awarded law degrees from the University of Zimbabwe and then Cambridge, and Graz University in Austria.
Moving to Geneva, she fought high-profile international cases.
But all the time she had a secret life: she woke at 4am every morning to write.
Petina Gappah's first short story was published online when she was 37 - and now, only 8 years later, there are two short-story collections, a novel, "The Book of Memory", several translations, with another novel in the pipeline.
From the start there has been a sense of a new voice arriving - Gappah's first book won the Guardian First Book Award.
Her stories are set in Zimbabwe, and they're about crime and punishment, love and family, in a deeply corrupt and divided society.
