We Need New Names
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Robin Miles
About this listen
Finalist for the Booker Prize: the "deeply felt and fiercely written" story of a young girl's journey out of Zimbabwe and to America (New York Times Book Review), from the author of Glory.
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.
"Original, witty, and devastating."—People
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Critic reviews
Winner of the 2014 PEN / Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction
Winner of the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction
Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize
Winner of the 2013 Etisalat Prize for Literature
Finalist for the 2013 Guardian First Book Award
One of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year for 2013
One of National Public Radio's Great Reads of 2013
"A deeply felt and fiercely written debut novel ... The voice Ms. Bulawayo has fashioned for [Darling] is utterly distinctive—by turns unsparing and lyrical, unsentimental and poetic, spiky and meditative."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"Bulawayo describes all this in brilliant language, alive and confident, often funny, strong in its ability to make Darling's African life immediate ... She demonstrates a striking ability to capture the uneasiness that accompanies a newcomers arrival in America."—Uzodinma Iweala, The New York Times Book Review
"Bulawayo mixes imagination and reality, combining an intuitive attention to detail with startling, visceral imagery ... This book is a provocative, haunting debut from an author to watch."—Elle
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One summer day, Margaux Fragoso meets Peter Curran at the neighborhood swimming pool, and they begin to play. She is seven; he is 51. When Peter invites her and her mother to his house, the little girl finds a child’s paradise of exotic pets and an elaborate backyard garden. Her mother, beset by mental illness and overwhelmed by caring for Margaux, is grateful for the attention Peter lavishes on her, and he creates an imaginative universe for her, much as Lewis Carroll did for his real-life Alice.
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a weirdly loving diatribe against pervs.
- By Dane Flakeman on 05-21-11
By: Margaux Fragoso
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Make Something Up
- Stories You Can't Unread
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk, Scott Sowers, Rich Orlow, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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For years Chuck Palahniuk has reserved his best storytelling for his readings, often choosing to read a new short story instead of whatever novel he is supposed to be promoting. Make Something Up compiles these previously unpublished tales for the very first time, plus the Byliner social media insta-classic "Phoenix" and Palahniuk's most notable pieces from Playboy.
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Plenty of shock, just not enough Palahniuk awe
- By Darwin8u on 06-10-15
By: Chuck Palahniuk
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The Hollow Ground
- By: Natalie S. Harnett
- Narrated by: Luci Christian
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced 11-year-old Brigid Howley and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the black lung-stricken Gramp. Tragedy is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud Irish-American clan who takes strange pleasure in the "curse" laid upon them generations earlier by a priest who ran afoul of the Molly Maguires. The weight of this legacy rests heavily on a new generation, when Brigid, already struggling to keep her family together, makes a grisly discovery in a long-abandoned bootleg mine shaft.
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Disfunction makes a good read
- By NHull on 05-30-14
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How to Survive a Summer
- A Novel
- By: Nick White
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Grad student Will Dillard has largely buried memories of the summer he spent at a camp intended to "cure" homosexuality. But when he finds out a horror movie based on the camp is hitting theaters, he's forced to face his past - and his role in another camper's death. As he recounts the events surrounding his "failed rehabilitation", Will strikes out on an impromptu road trip back home to Mississippi, eventually returning to the abandoned campgrounds to solve the mysteries of that pivotal summer.
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A story full of heart and healing
- By ZippyBippy on 05-06-18
By: Nick White
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Slice of Cherry
- By: Dia Reeves
- Narrated by: Suzy Jackson
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Kit and Fancy Cordelle are sisters of the best kind: best friends, best confidantes, and best accomplices. The daughters of the infamous Bonesaw Killer, Kit and Fancy are used to feeling like outsiders, and that's just the way they like it. But in Portero, where the weird and wild run rampant, the Cordelle sisters are hardly the oddest or most dangerous creatures around. It's no surprise when Kit and Fancy start to give in to their deepest desire: the desire to kill.
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Surreal, riveting tale
- By pakkmom on 02-11-11
By: Dia Reeves
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Brick Lane
- By: Monica Ali
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Abridged
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Nanzeen's inauspicious birth in a Bangladeshi village imbues in her a sense of fatalism that she carries across continents. Married off to a man old enough to be her father, Nanzeen moves to London and cares for her family. But gradually she begins to question whether fate controls her or whether she has a hand in her own destiny. She discovers both the complexity that comes with free choice and the depth of her attachment to her husband, her daughters and her new world.
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A truly wonderful book!
- By A M on 11-24-03
By: Monica Ali
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The Star Side of Bird Hill
- By: Naomi Jackson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
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My absolute favorite book of all time
- By Eme on 07-16-15
By: Naomi Jackson
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This Side of the Sky
- By: Elyse Singleton
- Narrated by: Myra Taylor, Sharon Washington, Richard Ferrone
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist Elyse Singleton delivers what Essence calls “a gem - the perfect book to curl up with.”
Best friends Lilian and Myraleen, two African American women from rural Mississippi, travel to Europe during World War II to act as members of the Women’s Army Corps. During this time of segregation and destruction, both women discover love and heartbreak, triumph and defeat.
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A Breath of Fresh Air
- By Adina Andreu on 07-19-12
By: Elyse Singleton
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Caramelo
- By: Sandra Cisneros
- Narrated by: Sandra Cisneros
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Lala Reyes’ grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl-makers. The striped (caramelo) is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala’s possession. The novel opens with the Reyes’ annual car trip - a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels - from Chicago to “the other side”, Mexico City. It is there, each year, that Lala hears her family’s stories, separating the truth from the “healthy lies” that have ricocheted from one generation to the next.
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Love, family, history, and fantasy, Caramelo
- By Michele on 08-07-20
By: Sandra Cisneros
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Shadow Show
- All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
- By: Sam Weller - editor, Mort Castle - editor
- Narrated by: George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
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THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
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The Kite Runner
- By: Khaled Hosseini
- Narrated by: Khaled Hosseini
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Why we think it’s a great listen: Never before has an author’s narration of his fiction been so important to fully grasping the book’s impact and global implications. Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of its monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them.
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A Worhty Read
- By P. C..S. on 08-17-03
By: Khaled Hosseini
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Sugar
- By: Bernice L. McFadden
- Narrated by: Myra Lucretia Taylor
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Sugar arrives in the small town of Bigelow, Arkansas, like an ominous storm. She saunters down the street in a blonde wig and spiked heels, cigarette dangling between red-painted lips. Without even speaking to her, the women in town hate her. But when she moves in next door to Pearl, a woman who tragically lost her daughter 15 years earlier, the two women bond over tragic pasts.
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Wow wow wow
- By brenda transon on 08-27-19
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Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
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Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
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The New Moon's Arms
- By: Nalo Hopkinson
- Narrated by: Gin Hammond
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Calamity is confronting two big transitions: the death of her beloved father and the beginning of menopause, a physical shift that has rekindled her gift for finding lost things. Suddenly, she is getting hot flashes that seem to forge objects out of thin air, most notably a four-year old boy. As Calamity takes the child into her care, she discovers that all is not as it seems. Then, Calamity must reawaken to the mysteries surrounding her own childhood and the early disappearance of her mother.
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What a joy
- By newmoon on 07-05-19
By: Nalo Hopkinson
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What listeners say about We Need New Names
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Arame Richardson
- 11-29-17
I completely feel Darling. Arame
As an immigrant i feel like Darlene could be me. she saw it all, tell it all. This book is definitely a masterpiece
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- Carla
- 12-04-13
One of the best narrator performances I've heard
What does Robin Miles bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
"We Need New Names" is a lovely, engaging, and moving book at any rate. But Ms Miles's narration carries it to a completely new level of immersion and beauty. She provides a crisp, beautiful rendering of Darling's voice as a young girl with a childish inflection and a strong Zimbabwean accent, and transitions later in the book to a more teenaged inflection and self-consciously American accent. The voices she provides for other characters add flavor as well, such as the contrast between the voice of the American NGO workers' broad Californian dialect and the speech of Darlings' friends; or, the contrast between the adolescent Darling's carefully calibrated "proper English" and her school-friend's "Ebonics" (as the friend herself calls it in the book). The interaction of speech and voice and identity forms a central theme of "We Need New Names", and Ms Miles's narration breathes palpable life into this theme. Just magnificent work. I am off to search Audible for other books she has narrated.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Tawana Taylor
- 12-24-23
the vivid descriptions of Africa and the transition to America
I liked the entire story and depth of characters while staying true to the realities of life.
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- J. Eric Towell
- 04-22-22
Utterly Wonderful!
I first heard of the book from a BBC weekend arts program, and I was immediately intrigued: the book sounded like just the sort of thing my mother would have loved (and read to us--a modern To Kill a Mockingbird, if you will). So, with Mom's spirit smiling at me from the passenger seat, I ordered the audiobook, and started in with Darling, Spo, Bastard, Stinna and Cheapo.
What a journey! What a story! What a rare, special, powerful glimpse of the complexities of life! So thought-provoking! So heartbreaking! So rich with detail!
The world needs more works like this one: more works that show us how similar we all are, regardless of home, country or station. More works to help us see that while so many of us have it so much better than they do in many parts of the world, the real tragedy is how poorly we treat those people who come to other countries to try to build better lives. Immigration reform? Absolutely needed! Clear, simple pathways to citizenship? Desperately needed.
Please do not come away from that last paragraph thinking that I'm talking about a preachy, highly political book! Oh, no! This book is amazing! It meets you where you are at n a way that most other books cannot approach. You will have a heaping helping of humor, wonderful descriptions, lush, well-constructed characters, primarily, along with ideas that may just make you want to help a neighbor.
That is worth infinitely more than the small price for the book!
Thank you, NoViolet!
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- Josh Rice
- 11-04-19
Beautiful
Strikingly beautiful and sharp. This is one of those books that is not easily forgotten.
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- drewster
- 05-14-16
Great immersion, but without resolution
Would you consider the audio edition of We Need New Names to be better than the print version?
The book does an excellent job of capturing what it may have felt like for a young child experiencing the epic social and cultural transformations depicted in the book. As this is a work of fiction, one might have expected some sort of parable, or a complete story arc to be drawn. As it stands, the story is a series of loosely coupled vignettes which are held together by the historic story of a nation in turmoil.
The evolution of language in both the book and the performance are well done, and one of the highlights of the book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Megan
- 04-04-16
Takes me home
Quite uncanny how this book rung so true to my upbringing in Zim and my transformation in America. Such a great read.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Julie W. Capell
- 01-05-14
Strong beginning and great narration
This book was described to me as telling the story of a young African girl’s immigration to the United States and her struggles to become an American. So I was a bit surprised when about one-half of the book was spent describing her childhood in Africa. As it turned out, this was by far the best part of the book. Perhaps because I myself was born and bred in the United States, I found her descriptions of everyday life in Africa much more interesting than those of life in America.
What I did find utterly convincing was the way Bulawayo inhabited her child protagonist, and then later in the book, the teenager. The author has a very unique way of showing the thought processes going on in the heads of her characters, such as the child’s delight in playing simple games, her obsession with food, and her occasional defiance of adult authority. Each scene unfolds from the child’s point-of-view, more often than not revealing her incomplete understanding of what is going on in the larger world around her. This is incredibly effective in several scenes in the first part of the book when the protagonist and her friends either witness or (nearly) perpetrate incredible cruelty without actually understanding or being affected by it.
The author skips a few years in the protagonist’s life and presents her as a young teenager already living in America. The transition was awkward and left me wondering why there was little to no explanation of how the girl ended up living in Michigan. The descriptions of difficulties with the simplest things-like making oneself understood over the telephone, or answering misguided questions about one’s country—were well done and were undoubtedly drawn from real life. So, too, the short sections in which she deals with the angst of the exile, a fascinating combination of exhilarating triumph (look at me! I have a home of my own, children who are Americans!) and deep sadness (never being able to return home, watching one’s children ignore or belittle traditions from the homeland). There are also some telling critiques of American society, but overall this entire half of the book felt more preachy than enlightened. Long passages about teenaged girls’ obsession with clothes and porn seemed to serve little narrative purpose, and the ending was strangely difficult to understand.
So I am glad I read this but for a more compelling—and nonfiction—take on Africans in exile in America, I would highly recommend Rescuing Regina by Josephe Marie Flynn.
[I listened to this as an audio book read by Robin Miles. She did a fantastic job of doing all kinds of different accents, very nuanced, wonderful performance.]
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3 people found this helpful
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- Kristi
- 06-06-17
Striking imagery, skillful narration - go for it!
I was introduced to NoViolet's work in a writing course and became an immediate fan. She is magical with description and mood. So very thankful for the relevance of the subject matter: immigrants' complicated and precarious position was brought to light with reality and compassion.
Robin Miles - freaking talented. One of the best narrators and perfect for bringing this book to life.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Bay Area Girl
- 03-23-14
Country -- which one is home; what is a country?
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes child narrator reminded me of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird -- truth teller who is willing to really see what is around her. The reality and the metaphorical use of "country" is well developed. The Zimbabwe part with her friends seems better and less rushed than the US par but maybe that was because it was so new for me. So many perfect little sentences. Repetition used like a chant. The "names" are intriguingly important. The cataloging of details is perfect.
What did you like best about this story?
The games the kids play which carry throughout the novel.
What does Robin Miles bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
exquisite timing and diction -- her accent reminded me this was an African's story but was very clear and understandable. Changed later in the story to reflect the American characters.
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1 person found this helpful