NoViolet Bulawayo's Glory is a novel published in 2022. The novel was partially inspired by the rise and fall of Robert G. Mugabe, the now former (and deceased) President of Zimbabwe. Mugabe ruled Zimbabwe with an iron fist for nearly four decades before he was removed from power in a Coup d'état. Glory is told from the perspective of a chorus of animal voices and shows a collapsing country that has been ruled by a dictator. It shows the tremendous effort a dictator must go through to uphold their illusion of power and the effort they must go through to fight against those who seek to remove them from power.
Initially, Bulawayo intended to write a nonfiction book about the aforementioned dictator of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe. But she settled for a fictional political satire. Separately, Glory was also inspired by George Orwell's seminal novel Animal Farm - as well as, to a lesser extent, his novel 1984.
Like her previous novel We Need New Names, Glory was critically well-received. Longlisted for the Booker Prize, The New York Times wrote of Glory that "The scope and complexity of the historical material Bulawayo takes on in her tale are ambitious, and she pulls it off."
