SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This chapter traces the diverse reception histories of the recent novel We Need New Names by Zimbabwean-born NoViolet Bulawayo. In this chapter, the contribution to the larger project on multilingual currents is to show that a novel can be diverse (or translated) within itself, circulating as it does amongst diverse audiences and in multiple discursive spaces. The quotation from Achebe with which this chapter opens asserts that there is diversity within the English language, and Achebe's use of the phrase "unheard of things" references not only the rise of the novel in Africa, but also the innovative and adaptive uses made of English by its speakers on the African continent. The chapter attempts to theorize the reader who reads within, against, and through multilingual currents, who can read the references and take pleasure in the knowledge that other readers are at times excluded from this restless position of reading.