We Need New Names

Bulawayo’s novel is not just a stunning piece of literary craftsmanship but also a novel that helps elucidate today’s world - Daily Telegraph

The challenging rhythm and infectious language of NoViolet Bulawayo's emotionally articulate novel turns a familar tale of immigrant displacement into a heroic ballad. Bulawayo's courage and her literary scope shine out from this outstanding debut - Daily Mail

Darling is 10 when we first meet her, and the voice Ms. Bulawayo has fashioned for her is utterly distinctive — by turns unsparing and lyrical, unsentimental and poetic, spiky and meditative... stunning novel... remarkably talented author - New York Times

Often heartbreaking, but also pulsing with colour and energy - The Times (Saturday Review)

Extraordinary - Daily Telegraph

creates a fictional world that is immediate, fresh, and identifies the arrival of a talented writer - Sunday Times (Culture)

NoViolet Bulawayo uses words potently, blending brutality and lyricism in her unflinching, bittersweet story of displacement - Observer

a really talented and ambitious author - Guardian

a debut that blends wit and pain... heartrending... wonderfully original - Independent

We Need New Names is full of life -- you can almost feel the sun on your arms and hear the birds in the trees -- and Bulawayo is certainly one to watch - Stylist

a powerful new African voice - Pride Magazine

Bulawayo's use of contemporary culture...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 magazine

a brilliantly poignant tale of what it is to be an outsider in a strange land - Glamour

Written in sharp, snappy prose, this is a raw and thought-provoking debut - Easy Living

Enthralling... a provocative, hauting debut from an author to watch - Elle (US)

original, witty and devastating - People Magazine

How does a writer tell the story of a traumatized nation without being unremittingly bleak? NoViolet Bulawayo manages if 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… A debut that is poignant and moving but which also glows with humanity and humour - Independent on Sunday

A novel that deals with the immigrant experience and torn identity is nothing new; what justifies the inclusion of We Need New Names on the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize is NoViolet Bulawayo’s command of Darling’s captivating voice, as she and her friends race through Paradise – “When we hit the bush we are already flying, scream-singing like the wheels in our voices will make us go faster” – a siren call of life and laughter more powerful than the hardships that blight her childhood. - Times Literary Supplement

When a novel is praised by Helon Habila and Oprah Winfrey, you have to sit up - Independent on Sunday

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

NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names is 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. No Violet Bulawayo is definitely a writer to watch - Edwidge Danticat

I knew this writer was going to blow up. Her honesty, her voice, her formidable command of her craft -- all were apparent from the first page. - Junot Diaz

I was bowled over... by NoViolet Bulawayo's shatteringly good first novel, We Need New Names - Anne Tyler, Good Housekeeping

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, author of When a Crocodile Eats the Sun

a work of gritty naturalism - Prospect

witty... ebullient... heartbreaking... our feisty heroine's sparkle never dims - i

a truthful, profound snapshot of the kind of life that often gets overlooked. Moving, fresh, enlightening. A fantastic novel - Waterstone's Aberystwyth

a fresh, engaging take on the relationship between rich and poor - Wanderlust

a bittersweet coming-of-age tale of displacement during the southern African nation's 'lost decade' - Voice

a tale of our time, a powerful condemnation of global inequality from the point of view of a 10-year-old in impossible circumstances... a stunning piece of literary craftsmanship - Weekly Telegraph

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

Wonderfully, this is a novel whipped with the complexities of African identities in a post-colonial and globalised world and its most compelling theme is that of contemporary displacement, a theme that will resonate with many readers - We Sat Down Blog

This is a young author to watch - Financial Times

This is a very readable tale, thanks to some excellent writing and its central character: a likeable heroine in a difficult world - UK Regional Press Syndication

We Need New Names is a distinct and hyper-contemporary treatment of the old You Can’t Go Home Again mould, and the book has more than enough going for it to easily graduate from the Booker longlist to the final six - Upcoming

deeply felt and fiercely written first novel - Scotsman

Bulawayo's novel may scream Africa, but her deft and often comic prose captures memories and tastes, among them the bitterness of disappointment, that transcend borders - Atlantic

Bulawayo excels... there is an inevitable nod to Achebe and the verbal delights and child's-eye view of the world is redolent of The God of Small Things. Otherwise, the magic is all Bulawayo's own - Literary Review

Ten-year-old Darling has a choice: it’s down, or out

NoViolet 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 -- but she tells a vivid, raw story all her own

Darling and her friends grow up during Zimbabwe's harrowing 'lost decade'. We Need New Names brings us Zimbabwe's decline from independence to repression under Mugabe in the way Half of a Yellow Sun brought us Biafra's struggle for independcence or The Tiger's Wife brought us the Balkans in the Second World War

Politically engaged author with plenty to say. Part of Zimbabwe's 'born free' generation, promised a golden future after the fall of white rule, instead NoViolet grew up learning how to hustle, survive and read the real world

Gives both side of the story -- we have the daily chaos of the children's lives and survival in Zimbabwe, followed by Darling's escape to the US, which brilliantly illuminates the daily difficulties, sadness and absurdities of the immigrant experience

Irresistible young heroine and child's-eye view; language is a wonderful patois of surprising clashes and combinations, of English and local dialects, mispronunciations. This gives the whole a lightness, a charm, that tempers the brutality while also setting it in very stark contrast