NoViolet Bulawayo Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

NoViolet Bulawayo is a published author of fictional novels. It is the pen name used by Elizabeth Zandile Tshele.

NoViolet was born October 12, 1981 in Tsholotsho, Zimbabwe. She would go to Niube High School and then Mzilikazi High School to do her A-levels. When it came to college, she applied to go to college in the United States. She enrolled as a student at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. She would then attend Texas A&M University-Commerce to graduate with her Bachelor’s degree in English and graduate Southern Methodist University with her Master’s degree in English. She would then attend Cornell where she received a Master of Fine Arts in the field of creative writing. She also earned a Truman Capote Fellowship in recognition of her writing.

She would later go on to teach fiction writing at Stanford University and Cornell. She writes full time when not busy with other projects. She is the author of the 2013 novel We Need New Names and the 2022 novel Glory. Her book We Need New Names has won several awards, including the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the LA Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Pen/Hemingway Award, the Etisalat Prize for Literature, the Betty Trask Award, the Fred Brown Literary Award, second place for the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, and was picked as a “5 Under 35” fiction selection by the National Book Foundation.

It was also shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Man Booker Prize, and the International Literature Award. It was named to the New York Times’ 2013 Notable Books of 2013 list as well as the Discover Great New Writers list from Barnes and Noble. We Need New Names made the shortlist for the 2013 Booker Prize, as did her follow up novel, Glory.

She has also had a story called “Hitting Budapest” that won her the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing. The story came out in the Boston Review’s November/December issue in 2010. The story would go on to become the opening of her first novel. She is a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and teaches fiction there as a Jones Lecturer. She has been listed as being one of the ‘Top 100 Most Influential Africans” in 2014 by New African magazine.

We Need New Names also made the 2013 Man Booker Prize shortlist. It would make her the first Zimbabwean and black African woman to make the shortlist for the prize. Bulawayo has also won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and the Etisalat Prize for literature. She has sat with the board of trustees from 2014 to 2018 of the pan-African literary incentive.

Her novel Glory was said to be partly inspired by Animal Farm by George Orwell. It’s about a nation that is about to embrace revolution. She took nearly three years to write the book and was also following along with grass roots activism in countries like the U.S., Uganda, Sudan and more, as well as the Black Lives Matter movement. It has been called an instant Zimbabwean classic by The Conversation. The Guardian’s Sarah Ladipo Manyika said that the author ‘doesn’t hold back’ when it comes to speaking truth to power, writing ‘urgently’ and ‘courageously’. The book made the longlist for the 2022 Booker Prize.

Her works include the story “Snapshots”, published in New Writing from Africa 2009, “Hitting Budapest”, published in the Boston Review. “Country Country” was published in 2020, and her novel We Need New Names came out in 2013. Her novel Glory was released in 2022.

We Need New Names is the first novel and the literary debut from NoViolet Bulawayo. It is the story of how a young girl moves from Zimbabwe and makes her way to the United States.

The main character in this novel is Darling. She’s a young girl that must make her way in Zimbabwe, which has its own native culture that can be not only fragile but violent, too. There she steals guavas with her friends and try to hold on to their memories of what things were like before paramilitary police destroyed their homes, the school shut down, or their fathers left the country to get jobs abroad.

The lucky thing about it is that Darling has a chance to get out. She can escape Zimbabwe through her ties to an aunt in the United States. Deciding to take the chance, she goes to America to what she hopes will be plenty of abundance. The only thing is that once she gets there, she does not have many options thanks to being an immigrant.

Find out what happens to Darling and whether she can make it in the United States by picking up this vividly told tale! Get a copy of We Need New Names to catch up on the story of this young immigrant as she goes to America to pursue her dreams.

Glory is the second fictional novel from NoViolet Bulawayo. Check out the novel that Sarah Ladipo Manyika of the Guardian called ‘dazzling’!

If you were used to humans being the center of the story, enjoy a refreshing change of pace as the animals take center stage in this energetic joyride of a novel.

It is the tale of an uprising seen through a variety of animal voices that allows us to see the world of humans more clearly. Some time ago in a land not too far away, the animals had a happy existence all their own. Things changed once the colonizers came by.

A hundred years passed by without much changing, but then something happened. The War of Liberation may have been filled with blood, but it brought hope to the animals. They also gained a new leader, a horse that not only commanded the sun but was a natural ruler. The horse ruled for forty years, assisted by the Chosen Ones as well as his violent Defenders. He was supported by his young wife Marvellous, a donkey.

When a new leader and regime appears, the animals are excited and hopeful. But can they break the cycle and truly find peace? Or will their new leader turn out to be a tyrant? Check out Glory to find out what happens in this unique animal history!