Glory
Presented by: Sarah Colvin
Glory is set in a fictional Zimbabwe, called Jidada, and its characters are anthropomorphised animals (it has been compared to Orwell’s Animal Farm). It tells the story of a goat called Destiny, who left Jidada after receiving a brutal beating from state forces, and now returns home.
An authoritarian regime is supressing history and memory in Jidada, particularly of a genocide called Gukurahundi, which was perpetrated on Jidada’s Ndebele population, including Destiny’s own family and village. The fictional genocide recalls the historical genocide in Zimbabwe, also called Gukurahundi: a Shona word for spring rain that washes away the chaff. When a Parker pen that had once belonged to her grandfather mysteriously appears behind her ear, Destiny sits down to write the story of her murdered family, and of other Jidadans who have been ‘disappeared’ by the regime. It is an act of resistance that has major consequences.
Bulawayo uses a free indirect narrative voice that gradually becomes a ‘we’-voice as the animals of Jidada find their collective capacity to resist an oppressive regime. The novel has strong comic elements that expose the absurdity of authoritarianism, alongside its brutality. It is politically hopeful: at the end of the novel, the animals of Jidada have learned to articulate their oppression through storytelling, and have begun the process of fighting back against a cruel autocracy.
The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022.
References
Booker Prizes, ‘NoViolet Bulawayo interview: “Tyranny isn’t just a Zimbabwean problem”’ https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/noviolet-bulawayo-interview-glory, accessed 28 June 2024
Mpofu, William J. ‘Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe: An Epistemicide and Genocide’. Journal of Literary Studies 37 (2021), 40-55
LANGUAGE: English
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