Glory (2022)

Why this one?

I’m currently making my way through the 2022 Booker Shortlist.

My second read from the list of six is the second novel by NoViolet Bulawayo, born Elizabeth Zandile Tshele (1981- ; active 2009- ), in Tsholotsho, Zimbabwe.  She moved to the US to study, initially in Texas and later completing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Cornell, where she was recognised with a Truman Capote Fellowship.    

In 2011 she won the Caine Prize (for best short story by an African writer) for “Hitting Budapest”, which later became the first chapter of We Need New Names, her 2013 debut novel.  The latter was shortlisted for the 2013 Booker (losing out to Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries), making her the first Black African woman and first Zimbabwean to be shortlisted for the Prize.  

Thoughts, etc.

Glory is a satirical allegory of the circumstances surrounding the end of Robert Mugabe’s decades of rule in Zimbabwe in 2017, and his replacement by his former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa. It uses a cast of animals in place of humans, enabling it to blend direct retelling of history with fantastical satire that becomes a broader commentary on dictatorships, tyrannical rulers, and the state of the modern world in general

In the novel, set in a version of Zimbabwe called Jidada (with a -da and another -da….), Mugabe is represented by the Old Horse, tiring of his responsibilities and with his wife (a donkey named Marvellous, fashion-obsessed and holding a spuriously achieved PhD) increasingly taking the limelight. A coup engineered by the Old Horse’s ruling party and enacted with the help of his own canine “Defenders” leads to the installation of a new ruling horse, Tuvius Delight Shasha - a stand-in for Mnangagwa right down to their shared predilection for scarves. Celebration among Jidada’s population at the ‘revolution’ soon turns to despair as it becomes clear that little has changed, and the cycle of brutal repression and economic imbalance will continue under the new, essentially continuity, leadership.

Alongside the focus on the ruling elites, the novel is given heart and humanity by its focus on Destiny, a young goat returning to Jidada. She observes the parlous state of her homeland and seeks understanding through re-engaging with her past, via conversations with her mother and other relatives. The sections recounting the decades of suffering inflicted on one family by the Old Horse’s regime are among the book’s most powerful, with a section detailing a 1983 massacre a particularly difficult read.

It’s a book with a huge amount to recommend it. The writing is genuinely distinctive: pacey, visually evocative, and packed with carnivalesque humour. It’s also sharp in its satire, weaponising brutal honesty (thinly disguised behind the animal-based veneer) to stunning effect. It uses a range of devices to give the impression of a novel full of voices, sometimes more successfully than others (the snippets of conversations in the queues that form everywhere as the country falls into chaos were on point, the Twitter-based sections felt a bit trite and lacking real bite - with a bit of highly obvious Trump-baiting distracting from the main focus rather than adding to it.)

I did occasionally find myself wondering whether the use of animals served much purpose beyond the obvious satirical masking. At times, especially towards the beginning of the novel, the animal traits are used to good comic effect, but increasingly they’re sidelined to the point where you can easily forget that we’re supposed to be imagining a cast of animals rather their human precedents. I suppose this is intended to some degree, highlighting the lack of distinction to be drawn between a world of animals and humans who just behave like animals in one way or another. But I did ultimately feel that there was more fun to be had with the animals’ traits than was actually had.

Other aspects of the novel had this same sense of being stylistically necessary but not always hugely enjoyable from a reader’s perspective. I did on occasion find the narrative predictable and repetitive, but when what’s being satirised is a world that seems full of both repetition and a sense of its inevitability, that’s probably all part of the game.

Score

8

It’s a distinctive, sharply observed and memorable read, with plenty to admire. It didn’t quite hit the sweet spot in some smaller ways for me, but it would still be a very worthy Booker winner.

Thusfar I’m still rooting for Claire Keegan but I have a long way to go!

Next up

Onwards with the Shortlist! Next up for me is The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka.