GLORY

A nation of animals is stirred to revolt in the face of decadeslong dictatorial rule.

Bulawayo’s second novel—following We Need New Names (2013)—opens with the decline of Old Horse, the longtime authoritarian leader of the African nation of Jidada who is, literally, an old horse. His regime is out of touch when it isn’t actively corrupt—a (pig) crony priest emptily sings his praises, his (canine) generals support his hard-line attitude, and his (donkey) wife turns a deaf ear to protesters. When Old Horse dies, the menagerie of citizens is cautiously hopeful for reform—cats, pigs, and other disgruntled creatures tweet out their fury, echoing contemporary themes of frustration with right-wing, egotistical leaders. (The unnamed U.S. president is a “Tweeting Baboon.”) Of course, the new horse is the same as the old horse: Tuvius, aka Tuvy, arrives with plenty of rhetoric about a “New Dispensation,” but he quickly proves himself greedy, egotistical, and belligerent toward all who cross him. A counterweight comes in the form of Destiny, a goat and writer raised on memories of the old regime’s violence. Bulawayo’s use of animals gives the story a bit of quirkiness, and she writes sinuous prose rich with repetition and intensifiers that conjure a mood of an epic folktale. But the characters are so fundamentally human in behavior and action—tweeting, jet-setting, slaughtering—that the setup scarcely qualifies as an allegory. And for a novel of such breadth, its arc is straightforward; Tuvy is so cartoonishly dim, Destiny so straightforwardly heroic, and Jidadans’ rhetoric so well-worn (“What do we have to do in order for our bodies, our lives, our dreams, our futures, to finally matter?”) that the conclusions feel overly familiar despite its offbeat conceit.

A lyrical if rote tale of dominance and resistance.