3DB1
MARCH13, 2022
KING OF COMEDYTwo biographies of
Buster Keaton, slapstick genius
COMING TO AMERICAAgeneticist looks at
the continent’s first residents
WHISPER CAMPAIGNSSimon Schama on
Gal Beckerman’s ‘The Quiet Before’
EARLY ON INNoViolet Bulawayo’s manifoldly
clever new novel, “Glory,” she completely re-
moves the vocabulary of “people” from the
story and the language of its characters, who
are all animals. The book is set in Jidada, a fic-
tional African country that can be understood
as a sort of fantasia of Zimbabwe in the period
between the 2017 military overthrow of its
president, Robert Mugabe, and his death two
years later. It is a brilliant, 400-page postcolo-
nial fable charting the downfall of one tyrant —
whose counterpart here is an elderly horse —
and the rise of a new one.
The other inhabitants of Jidada are pigs and
cows, goats and sheep, cats and dogs, chickens
and the odd peacock. There is a very large and
symbol-laden crocodile who recalls the real-
life nicknames given to Mugabe’s human re-
placement, Emmerson Mnangagwa, and also
to the South African prime minister P.W. Bo-
tha, a supporter of apartheid. There are no
men or women in “Glory”; there is no person-
hood at all, only “mals” and “femals.” Things
that are kept private are “persomal” matters.
Quadrupedal animals switch freely between
moving on four legs and two, and when they
Animal
Kingdom
By Violet Kupersmith
LUCY JONES CONTINUED ON PAGE 16
GLORY
By NoViolet Bulawayo
403 pp. Viking. $27.
