We Need New Names

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the "original, witty, and devastating" (People) story of a young girl's journey from Zimbabwe to America.

Winner of The PEN / Hemingway Award for Debut FictionThe Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First FictionThe Zora Neale Hurston/ Richard Wright Legacy Award for Fiction

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.

"Deeply felt and fiercely written." —New York Times Book Review

"[Bulawayo's] hard, funny first novel is a triumph." —Entertainment Weekly

"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