We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulawayo
We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulawayo
1 Rating(s)
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We Need New Names
A Novel

Author: NoViolet Bulawayo

Narrator: Robin Miles

Unabridged: 8 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/21/2013

Synopsis

This unflinching and powerful novel tells the "deeply felt and fiercely written" story of a young girl's journey out of Zimbabwe to America (New York Times Book Review).

Darling is only ten years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo's belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad.

But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America's famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few. NoViolet Bulawayo's debut calls to mind the great storytellers of displacement and arrival who have come before her — from Junot Diaz to Zadie Smith to J.M. Coetzee — while she tells a vivid, raw story all her own.

"Original, witty, and devastating." —People

About NoViolet Bulawayo

NoViolet's story 'Hitting Budapest,' won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing. NoViolet's other work has been shortlisted for the 2009 SA PEN Studzinsi Award, and has appeared in Callaloo, The Boston Review, Newsweek, and The Warwick Review, as well as in anthologies in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the UK. NoViolet earned her MFA at Cornell University, where her work has been recognized with a Truman Capote Fellowship. NoViolet was born and raised in Zimbabwe.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Rick on December 04, 2013

Hard to say what drew me to this book -- the author's name is just awesome. The cover is eye-catching. The reviews have been stellar. Also, I've long been interested in the painful history of Zimbabwe (once British colonial Rhodesia) since I tried to figure out how to teach this hugely complex subje......more

Goodreads review by Paul on October 02, 2013

A few years ago I was listening to one of those From our Own Correspondent programmes on the BBC. A female journalist was on an assignment in Mali and had got herself completely lost. She drove up to this village the middle of nowhere and a whole crowd of teenagers spotted her and came crowding arou......more

Goodreads review by Moses on August 29, 2013

You may love a book and hate it at the same time. I did, for this one. Why love? Too many reasons, African, Man Booker tagging at it, youngish writer, and a powerful and unique style that is not too easy to forget. Why hate? Because, because, why cram in a million things into a single book? At some......more

Quotes

Winner of the 2014 PEN / Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction


Winner of the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction


Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize

Winner of the 2013 Etisalat Prize for Literature

Finalist for the 2013 Guardian First Book Award

One of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year for 2013

One of National Public Radio's Great Reads of 2013

"A deeply felt and fiercely written debut novel ... The voice Ms. Bulawayo has fashioned for [Darling] is utterly distinctive - by turns unsparing and lyrical, unsentimental and poetic, spiky and meditative." --- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Bulawayo describes all this in brilliant language, alive and confident, often funny, strong in its ability to make Darling's African life immediate ... She demonstrates a striking ability to capture the uneasiness that accompanies a newcomers arrival in America." -- Uzodinma Iweala, The New York Times Book Review



"Bulawayo mixes imagination and reality, combining an intuitive attention to detail with startling, visceral imagery ... This book is a provocative, haunting debut from an author to watch." - Elle

"Bulawayo, whose prose is warm and clear and unfussy, maintains Darling's singular voice throughout, even as her heroine struggles to find her footing. Her hard, funny first novel is a triumph." -- Entertainment Weekly

"Nearly as incisive about the American immigrant experience as it is about the failings of Mugabe's regime [in Zimbabwe]." -- National Public Radio

"Bulawayo's first novel is original, witty and devastating." ---People Magazine


"Ms. Bulawayo's artistry is such that we can't help but see ourselves in that wider world ... Darling is a dazzling life force with a rich, inventive language all her own, funny and perceptive but still very much a child ... It would be hard to overstate the freshness of Ms. Bulawayo's language, with words put together in utterly surprising ways that communicate precisely." ---Judy Wertheimer, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Writing with poignant clarity and hard-hitting imagery, Bulawayo delivers this first work as an offering of hope." --The New York Daily News

"How does a writer tell the story of a traumatised nation without being unremittingly bleak? NoViolet Bulawayo manages it by forming a cast of characters so delightful and joyous that the reader is seduced by their antics at the same time as finding out about the country's troubles." -- Leyla Sanai, The Independent

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