**SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2013**

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

'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 Haiti and not even this one we live in - 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 isn't all bad, though. There's 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 finds this new paradise brings its own set of challenges - for her and also for those she's left behind.

'Extraordinary' Daily Telegraph

'A debut that blends wit and pain... Heartrending...wonderfully original' Independent

'Sometimes shocking, often heartbreaking but also pulsing with colour and energy' The Times

*NoViolet's new book Glory has been Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022 and is out now*

Prizes

Winner of Etisalat Prize for Literature 2014 (UK),Winner of PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction 2014 (UK),Winner of Society of Authors Awards: Trask Award 2014 (UK),Winner of 2014 Zora Neale Hurston/ Richard Wright Legacy Award 2014 (UK),Runner-up for Barnes and Noble Discover Award for Fiction 2014 (UK),Short-listed for Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2013 (UK),Short-listed for Guardian First Book Award 2013 (UK),Long-listed for The Folio Prize 2014 (UK),Long-listed for I.M.P.A.C. Dublin Award 2015 (UK)

We Need New Names is a "before" and "after" kind of novel, the kind that marks a new beginning, a new shift in the African literary tradition . . . To me, it is a complete novel in terms of aesthetics and politics -- Mukoma Wa Ngugi * The Rise of the African Novel *
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 *

NOVIOLET BULAWAYO grew up in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. When she was eighteen, she moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her first novel, We Need New Names, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Guardian First Book Award and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, and won a Betty Trask Award, Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, the Etisalat Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction. She has also won the Caine Prize for African Writing and a National Book Award's '5 Under 35'. NoViolet earned her MFA at Cornell University, and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, where she taught fiction. She currently writes full-time, from wherever she finds herself.