We Need New Names is the 2013 debut novel of expatriate Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo. A coming-of-age story, We Need New Names tells of the life of a young girl named Darling, first as a 10-year-old in Zimbabwe, navigating a world of chaos and degradation with her friends, and later as a teenager in the Midwest United States, where a better future seems about to unfold when she goes to join an aunt working there.[1]
The first chapter of the book, "Hitting Budapest", initially presented as a story in the Boston Review,[2] won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing.[3][1] when the Chair of Judges, Hisham Matar, said: "The language of ‘Hitting Budapest’ crackles. This is a story with moral power and weight, it has the artistry to refrain from moral commentary. NoViolet Bulawayo is a writer who takes delight in language."[4]
We Need New Names was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize (2013),[5] the Guardian First Book Award shortlist (2013),[6] and a Barnes & Noble Discover Award finalist (2013).[7] It was the winner of the inaugural Etisalat Prize for Literature (2013),[8][9] and won the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for debut work of fiction.[10][11] It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction (2013).[12]
