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To play the country-game, we have to choose a country. Everybody wants to be the USA

and Britain and Canada and Australia and Switzerland and them. Nobody wants to be rags of

countries like Congo, like Somalia, like Iraq, like Sudan, like Hai and not even this one we livein who wants to be a terrible place of hunger and things falling apart?

Darling and her friends live in a shanty called Paradise, which of course is no such thing. It isnt

all bad, though. Theres mischief and adventure, games of Find bin Laden, stealing guavas,

singing Lady Gaga at the tops of their voices.

They dream of the paradises of America, Dubai, Europe, where Madonna and Barack Obama

and David Beckham live. For Darling, that dream will come true. But, like the thousands of

people all over the world trying to forge new lives far from home, Darling nds this newparadise brings its own set of challenges for her and also for those shes le behind.

About The Book

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About The Author

Reviews

NOVIOLET BULAWAYO was born in Tsholotsho a year aerZimbabwes independence from Brish colonial rule. When

she was eighteen, she moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan.

In 2011 she won the Caine Prize for African Wring; in 2009

she was shortlisted for the South Africa PEN Studzinsi Award,

judged by JM Coetzee. Her work has appeared in magazines

and in anthologies in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the UK.

She earned her MFA at Cornell University, where she was also

awarded a Truman Capote Fellowship, and she is currently aStegner Fellow at Stanford University in California.

Darling is 10 when we rst meet her, and the voice Ms. Bulawayo has fashioned for her

is uerly disncve by turns unsparing and lyrical, unsenmental and poec, spiky and

meditave... a stunning novel... from a remarkably talented authorMichiko Kakutani, New York Times

NoViolet Bulawayo has created a world that lives and breathes and ghts, kicks, screams

and scratches, too. She has clothed it in words and given it a voice at once dissonant and

melodic, uerly disnct

Aminaa Forna

I was bowled over...by NoViolet Bulawayos shaeringly good rst novel, We Need New

Names

Anne Tyler

I knew this writer was going to blow up. Her honesty, her voice, her formidable command ofher cra all were apparent from the rst page

Junot Diaz

Enthralling... a provocave, haunng debut from an author to watch

Elle(US)

NoViolet Bulawayos We Need New Names is an exquisite and powerful rst novel, lled

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 aer youre done reading the book.NoViolet Bulawayo is denitely a writer to watch

Edwidge Dancat

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Topics For Discussion

The tle We Need New Names highlights the link between names and identy. Discuss howNoViolet Bulawayo uses the characters names to explore themes of identy and reveal

ironies: What exactly is an African? Godknows asks (p.119).

Bulawayo obviously intends the name Paradise to have ironic overtones, but are there any

ways in which it is a posive place for the children?

Discuss Bulawayos use of language to convey the characters of the children and young people

in the novel. Did you nd their voices convincing? What struck you as parcularly vivid or

realisc?

Forgiveness is not a friend-friend because her family just recently arrived in Paradise (p.78).

Discuss how Bulawayo portrays the relaonships and hierarchies between children and young

people. Is We Need New Namesas much about the complexies of growing up as it is about

themes of naonality, displacement and identy?

Discuss the ways in which Bulawayo explores reacons to trauma and psychological breakdown

through the characters of Chipo, Prince and Uncle Kojo.

In the days right aer the vong... Paradise didnt sleep. The adults stayed up for many

nights, dizzy and restless with expectaon, not knowing how to sit sll (p.134)

I am an African, he says. This is my fucking country, my father was born here, I was born here,

just like you! His voice is so full of pain its as if there is something that is searing him deep

in his blood. (p. 119)

How does NoViolet Bulawayo present diering perspecves on Zimbabwes polical unrest?

Discuss Darlings sense of displacement in America. Why does she have such conicng

feelings about her own naonal identy? Do you agree with Sbhos comment if its your

country, you have to love it to live in it and not leave it(p.286)?

How does Bulawayo use the character of Tshaka Zulu to examine the importance of family

and cultural identy?

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Suggesons for Further Reading

For more on NoViolet visit www.vintage-books.co.uk

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

Things Fall Apartby Chinua Achebe

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Last Resort: A Zimbabwe Memoirby Douglas Rogers

House of Stone by Chrisna Lamb

Zimbabwe: Years of Hope and Despairby Philip Barclay

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