We Need New Names: A Novel
By NoViolet Bulawayo
Read by Robin Miles
8.98 Hours
• 05/21/2013
• Unabridged
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1 Format: Digital Download
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.
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Summary
Summary
Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award
Finalist for the Man Booker Prize
Winner of the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award for Debut Fiction
Winner of the 2014 Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Award for Fiction
Winner of the 2013 Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Prize for First Fiction
Winner of the 2013 Etisalat Prize for Literature
A 2013 Guardian First Book Award Finalist
Winner of the 2013 Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction
One of the New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books for 2013
A 2013 New York Times Editor’s Choice
One of NPR’s Great Reads for 2013
A 2014 Indies Choice Book Award Honoree for Adult Debut
Selected for the June 2013 Indie Next List
One of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2013 for Fiction
An Amazon Top 100 Book of 2013
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.
Editorial Reviews
Editorial Reviews
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
[Bulawayo] shows the beaming promise of a young Junot Diaz. With a style all her own-one steeped in wit and striking imagination-she movingly details the complexities of the immigrant experience. —The American Prospect
An exquisite and powerful first novel, filled with an equal measure of beauty and horror and laughter and pain. The lives (and names) of these characters will linger in your mind, and heart, long after you're done reading the book. NoViolet Bulawayo is definitely a writer to watch. —Edwidge Danticat, award-winning author of Brother, I'm Dying and Breath, Eyes, Memory
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
NoViolet Bulawayo is a powerful, authentic, nihilistic voice - feral, feisty, funny - from the new Zimbabwean generation that has inherited Robert Mugabe's dystopia. —Peter Godwin, betselling author of The Fear and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun
One of National Public Radio's Great Reads of 2013 —
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
Fans of Junot Díaz, who, as fiction editor of Boston Review, published NoViolet Bulawayo's early work, will love her debut novel, We Need New Names ...Bulawayo's use of contemporary culture (the kids play a game in which they hunt for bin Laden and, later, text like their lives depend on it), as well as her fearless defense of the immigrant experience through honoring the cadence of spoken language, sets this book apart-on the top shelf. —Kristy Davis, Oprah.com
—
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
NoViolet Bulawayo has created a world that lives and breathes - and fights, kicks, screams, and scratches, too. She has clothed it in words and given it a voice at once dissonant and melodic, utterly distinct. —Aminatta Forna, author of The Memory of Love and Ancestor Stones
Writing with poignant clarity and hard-hitting imagery, Bulawayo delivers this first work as an offering of hope. —The New York Daily News
Nearly as incisive about the American immigrant experience as it is about the failings of Mugabe's regime [in Zimbabwe]. —National Public Radio
Bulawayo has written a powerful novel. Her gift as a visual storyteller should propel her to a bright future -- a dream fulfilled, no matter the country —Korina Lopez, USA Today
Bulawayo's first novel is original, witty and devastating. —People Magazine
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
One of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year for 2013 —
Finalist for the 2013 Guardian First Book Award —
—
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
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
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 —
“Bulawayo’s
first novel is original, witty, and devastating.” —People
“Bulawayo’s
use of contemporary culture (the kids play a game in which they hunt for bin
Laden and, later, text like their lives depend on it), as well as her fearless
defense of the immigrant experience through honoring the cadence of spoken
language, sets this book apart—on the top shelf. —Oprah.com
“Bulawayo
has written a powerful novel. Her gift as a visual storyteller should propel
her to a bright future—a dream fulfilled, no matter the country.” —USA Today
“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
“A novel as unique as its author name, NoViolet
Bulawayo’s We Need New Names enables
us to see Zimbabwe and our own country through the inquisitive eyes of a
ten-year-old girl. The Africa that she inhabits seems as unfamiliar to us as
her buddies named Bastard and Godknows, but the America to which she immigrates
has a strangeness that immigrants know better than the rest of us. This tale of
assimilation and identity has a rawness that somehow retains its charm. Quite
simply unforgettable.” —Barnes&Noble.com, editorial review
“Deeply
felt and fiercely written…the voice Ms. Bulawayo has fashioned for her
[narrator, Darling] is utterly distinctive—by turns unsparing and lyrical,
unsentimental and poetic, spiky and meditative…Using her gift for pictorial
language, Ms. Bulawayo gives us snapshots of Zimbabwe that have the indelible
color and intensity of a folk art painting…Ms. Bulawayo gives us a sense of Darling’s
new life [in the United States] in staccato takes that show us both her
immersion in and her alienation from American culture. We come to understand
how stranded she often feels, uprooted from all the traditions and beliefs she
grew up with, and at the same time detached from the hectic life of easy
gratification in America.” —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 without
resorting to the kind of preaching meant to remind Western readers that African
stories are universal…Bulawayo is clearly a gifted writer. She demonstrates a
striking ability to capture the uneasiness that accompanies a newcomer’s
arrival in America, to illuminate how the reinvention of the self in a new
place confronts the protective memory of the way things were back home.” —New York Times Book Review
“Nearly as
incisive about the American immigrant experience as it is about the failings of
Mugabe’s regime [in Zimbabwe].” —NPR
“Bulawayo’s use of English is disarmingly
fresh, her arrangement of words startling.” —Publishers Weekly
“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.” —Library Journal
“Bulawayo crafts a moving and open-eyed
coming-of-age story.” —Kirkus Reviews
“With her
rich, beautiful voice, Robin Miles adopts an authentic accent and a childish
tone to recount the exploits of Darling and her oddly named friends. Events
range from the tragicomic stealing of guavas from the rich houses, which they
eat until they're constipated, to the downright tragic game of reenacting the
beating death of an antigovernment activist. When Darling moves to ‘Destroyedmichygen,’
Miles subtly changes the accent to reflect Darling’s new way of speaking as she
becomes an American teenager. Darling is an illegal immigrant who cannot visit
home, and her growing feeling that she doesn’t really belong anywhere is
tangible. Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award.” —AudioFile
Author
Author Bio: NoViolet Bulawayo
NoViolet Bulawayo, born and raised in Zimbabwe, is the author of several different works, including the short story “Hitting Budapest” and the novel We Need New Names. Her stories have won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing, and she was shortlisted for the 2009 SA PEN Studzinsi Award. Bulawayo earned an MFA from Cornell University, where her work has been recognized with a Truman Capote Fellowship; she has gone on to see her stories published in the Boston Review, Newsweek, and the Warwick Review, among others.
Titles by Author
Details
Details
| Available Formats : | Digital Download |
| Category: | Fiction |
| Runtime: | 8.98 |
| Audience: | Adult |
| Language: | English |
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