Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.
NoViolet Bulawayo left Zimbabwe as an 18-year-old to study law in the United States and returned for an extended stay almost two decades later as an award-winning author, including as a finalist for the Man Booker Prize for her 2013 debut, We Need New Names, the first Black African woman and first Zimbabwean to make the short list. The first chapter of the book also won the Caine Prize for African Writing. She spent a year there while writing the recently published Glory (Viking), a political allegory based on the overthrow of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, with talking animals populating a fictitious country.
The California-based Bulawayo, who first wrote poetry before fiction, comes from a line of storytellers – her grandmother, whose tales were filled with talking animals and alternate universes, and her late father, who was a retired police officer. She switched from law to writing as an undergraduate at Kalamazoo Valley Community College (where she worked at a grocery store) before moving on to Texas A&M, Cornell (where she got her MFA) and Stanford, first as a Stegner Fellow and now as Jones Lecturer in Fiction.
Born Elizabeth Zandile Tshele, she didn’t learn her given name until first grade because of the cultural practice of giving nicknames. She eventually changed it: “No” means “with” in her first language Ndebele; Violet was the name of her mother, who died when the author was 18 months old; Bulawayo is the name of the town where she grew up.
The book that:
…kept me up way too late:
An Untamed State by Roxane Gay. You rightly know her for her incisive nonfiction; she’s also a riveting storyteller. This harrowing but ultimately hopeful book kept me turning the pages.
…made me weep uncontrollably:
The devastating ending of The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi undid me. I didn’t think I’d ever cry “ngi-ngi” over a book, but, dear reader, I cried “ngi-ngi” over this one book.
...I read in one sitting, it was that good:
Yoko Ogawa’s beautiful and moving novel, The Housekeeper and the Professor. And because I’m prone to binging, I immediately found her Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales, and inhaled it.
…currently sit on my nightstand:
The Eternal Audience of One by Rémy Ngamije, The Things I Have Withheld by Kei Miller, The Houseguest by Amparo Dávila.
…I’d pass on to a kid:
Home is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo is a haunting, gorgeous novel-in-verse about identity and belonging.
…made me laugh out loud:
The Lunatic by Anthony C. Winkler is a morbid trip into the mind of a madman. I’m in awe of how it managed to be the funniest book I’ve ever read while still tackling some serious themes.
…I’d like turned into a Netflix show:
The Sex Lives of African Women by Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah is so important and groundbreaking in its treatment of African women’s sexualities it deserves to be consumed in every possible medium; a docuseries would be a great way to widen its reach.
...I last bought:
For my niece, because it’s an incendiary feminist manifesto, Mona Eltahawy’s The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls.
...has the best title:
The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini stuck to my head and wouldn’t give me peace until I had to get the book, which I couldn’t put down. Right now I’m obsessing over the title, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones.
...has the best opening line:
“I was not sorry when my brother died,” from Tsitsi Dangarembga’s powerful classic Nervous Conditions is both stunning and unforgettable.
...has the greatest ending:
Butterfly Burning by Yvonne Vera. An imitable writer whose pen tends toward difficult subjects, Yvonne Vera is adept at looking trauma in the eye and writing it with such devastating beauty.
...I’ve re-read the most:
Tholukuthi this one’s hard; it’s probably between One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez and Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.
...I could only have discovered at…:
I found The Obscene Bird of Night by José Donoso while browsing at Walden Pond Books, one of my favorite independent bookstores in Oakland. A challenging but wonderfully strange read.
...I’d want signed by the author:
Books by my former creative writing students and friends who are working on their first projects: Keep at it fam, I can’t wait to read you!
Read Bulawayo's Picks:
Home Is Not a Country
The Lunatic
The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls
