Summary

The publishers big spring debut-after its big fall debut, Kevin Powerss The Yellow Birds, a National Book Award winner, so pay attention-vivifies ten-year-old Darlings journey from Zimbabwe to America. Surviving by stealing guavas with her friends and recalling Before, when their fathers hadnt left for jobs abroad after the paramilitary police destroyed their homes, Darling grasps at a chance to go live in America with an aunt. Its not the promised land she had hoped. Caine Literary Prize winner Bulawayos book is being snatched up worldwide.


A remarkable literary debut shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: the unflinching and powerful story of a young girl's journey out of Zimbabwe and to America.

Darling is only ten years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo's belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad.

But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America's famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few. NoViolet Bulawayo's debut 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 -- while she tells a vivid, raw story all her own.