Imprint: Chatto & Windus
Published: 07/04/2022
ISBN: 9781784744298
Length: 416 Pages
Dimensions: 240mm x 37mm x 162mm
Weight: 648g
RRP: £18.99
'You thought you were getting a novel as good as We Need New Names, tholukuthi Bulawayo's second is even more dazzling' Sarah Ladipo Manyika, Guardian
Glory is an energy burst, an exhilarating joyride. It is the story of an uprising, told by a bold, vivid chorus of animal voices that helps us see our human world more clearly
A long time ago, in a bountiful land not so far away, the animal denizens lived quite happily. Then the colonisers arrived. After nearly a hundred years, a bloody War of Liberation brought new hope for the animals -- along with a new leader. A charismatic horse who commanded the sun and ruled and ruled and kept on ruling. For forty years he ruled, with the help of his elite band of Chosen Ones, a scandalously violent pack of Defenders and, as he aged, his beloved and ambitious young donkey wife, Marvellous.
But even the sticks and stones know there is no night ever so long it does not end with dawn. And so it did for the Old Horse, one day as he sat down to his Earl Grey tea and favourite radio programme. A new regime, a new leader. Or apparently so. And once again, the animals were full of hope . . .
Glory tells the story of a country seemingly trapped in a cycle as old as time. And yet, as it unveils the myriad tricks required to uphold the illusion of absolute power, it reminds us that the glory of tyranny only lasts as long as its victims are willing to let it. History can be stopped in a moment. With the return of a long-lost daughter, a #freefairncredibleelection, a turning tide -- even a single bullet.
** A 2022 Book to Look Forward To in the Guardian, The Times, Oprah Daily, Daily Mail **
Imprint: Chatto & Windus
Published: 07/04/2022
ISBN: 9781784744298
Length: 416 Pages
Dimensions: 240mm x 37mm x 162mm
Weight: 648g
RRP: £18.99
Spellbinding . . . This social media-saturated narrative, interwoven with the oral storytelling techniques of idiomatic speech and call and response, makes Bulawayo feel like a pioneer . . . Glory, with a flicker of hope at its end, is allegory, satire and fairytale rolled into one mighty punch
A brilliant, 400-page post-colonial fable . . . Bulawayo is really out-Orwelling Orwell. This is a satire with sharper teeth, angrier, and also very, very funny . . . this is also a satire in which female characters are not pushed to the margins, but hold he story together . . . Bulawayo dares us, and the citizens of all Jidadas everywhere, to reimagine what our nations could someday become
I was very impressed indeed with NoViolet Bulawayo's debut . . . It is therefore a delight to be able to say that Bulawayo's new novel, Glory, is even better and radically different . . . acerbic, precise, heart-rending and hilarious . . . It is brave, and moving, as the citizens learn, slowly, to be unafraid. Bulawayo invites you to suspend disbelief in order that you believe
Vital and universal
Bulawayo broaches what it means to fight for democracy and call somewhere home in a timely and imaginative way . . . A memorable, funny and yet serious allegory about a country's plight under tyranny and what individual and collective freedom means in an age of virtual worlds and political soundbites
Playing with language is the key to unlocking the literary metaverse of Glory, which is about personalising a very public story . . . It's inescapably funny that the animals in Glory are contemporary human-style beings . . . Bulawayo's dense, mischievous fable is ultimately optimistic. Funny ha ha and peculiar, it delivers, over the course of 400 pages of wordplay and animal magic, a surprisingly warm, intimate and, yes, human feeling
A novel with heart and energy . . . you can see why her 2013 debut We Need New Names won several big prizes, and a Booker shortlisting