We need new names : a novel

Title:

Author:

Summary:

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.

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

296 pages ; 22 cm

Genre:

Domestic fiction

Subject Term:

Girls -- Fiction.

Political violence -- Fiction.

Families -- Fiction.

Emigration and immigration -- Fiction.

Zimbabweans -- United States -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Zimbabwe -- Fiction.

Publisher:

Reagan Arthur Books, Little, Brown and company,

Publication Date:

2013

ISBN:

9780316230810

Publication Information:

New York : Reagan Arthur Books, Little, Brown and company, 2013.

Call Number:

BULAWAY

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607002771023	Adult Fiction	BULAWAY	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

A remarkable literary debut shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: the unflinching and powerful story of a young girl's journey out of Zimbabwe and to America.

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.

Author Notes

NoViolet Bulawayo 's story "Hitting Budapest," the opening chapter of the novel, 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 recently earned her MFA at Cornell University, where her work has been recognized with a Truman Capote Fellowship. She will be attending Stanford in the fall as a Wallace Stegner Fellow for 2012-2014. NoViolet was born and raised in Zimbabwe.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

The short story that was adapted to become the first chapter of this debut novel by current Stegner fellow Bulawayo won the Caine Prize in 2011, known as the African Booker. Indeed the first half of the book, which follows a group of destitute but fearless children in a ravaged, never-named African country, is a remarkable piece of literature. Ten-year-old Darling is Virgil, leading us through Paradise, the shantytown where she and her friends Bastard, Godknows, Sbho, and Stina live and play. "Before," they lived in real houses and went to school-that is, before the paramilitary policemen came and destroyed it all, before AIDS, before Darling's friend Chipo was impregnated by her own grandfather. Now they roam rich neighborhoods, stealing bull guavas and hiding in trees while gangs raid white homes. Darling and her friends invent new names for themselves from American TV and spent their time trying to get "rid of Chipo's stomach." Abruptly, Darling lands with her aunt in America, seen as an ugly place, and absorbs the worst of its culture-Internet porn, obscene consumerism, the depreciation of education. Darling may not be worse off, but her life has not improved in any meaningful way. When Bulawayo won the Caine Prize, she said, "I want to go and write from home. It's a place which inspires me. I don't feel inspired by America at all," and the chapters set outside of Africa make this abundantly clear. In this promising novel's early chapters, Bulawayo's use of English is disarmingly fresh, her arrangement of words startling. Agent: Jin Auh, the Wylie Agency. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Review

Caine Prize-winning Bulawayo's debut novel opens in a Zimbabwean shantytown called Paradise, where life is a daily struggle for sustenance as the regime destroys homes and closes schools. As ten-year-old Darling and her friends roam the streets, turning their quest for food into a game, Darling makes wry observations about her country's social ills that belie her tender age. Given the opportunity to move to Michigan with her aunt Fostalina, Darling faces a different challenge: how to transition from abject poverty to ostentatious excess. With an acute sense of irony, she observes refrigerators stuffed with food even as the women diet rigorously to fit into Victoria's Secret underwear and the dog whose room is larger than most homes in Zimbabwe. In a poignant scene, Darling sniffs at a guava and is transported to her homeland. VERDICT As Bulawayo effortlessly captures the innate loneliness of those who trade the comfort of their own land for the opportunities of another, Darling emerges as the freshest voice yet to spring from the fertile imaginations of talented young writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Dinaw Mengestu, who explore the African diaspora in America. [See Prepub Alert, 11/19/12.]-Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Estero, FL (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.