We Need New Names

We Need New Names is the 2013 debut novel of expatriate Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo. A coming-of-age story, We Need New Names tells of the life of a young girl named Darling, first as a 10-year-old in Zimbabwe, navigating a world of chaos and degradation with her friends, and later as a teenager in the Midwestern United States, where a better future seems about to unfold when she goes to join an aunt working there.

The first chapter of the book, "Hitting Budapest", initially presented as a story in the Boston Review, won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing. The Chair of Judges, Hisham Matar, said: "The language of ‘Hitting Budapest’ crackles. This is a story with moral power and weight, it has the artistry to refrain from moral commentary. NoViolet Bulawayo is a writer who takes delight in language."

We Need New Names was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize (2013), the Guardian First Book Award shortlist (2013), and a Barnes & Noble Discover Award finalist (2013). It was the winner of the inaugural Etisalat Prize for Literature (2013), and won the prestigious PEN/Hemingway Award for debut work of fiction. It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction (2013).