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Plot Summary of Glory
Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo is an animal fable and political satire centred on the turbulent revolutions, history, and government of the fictional African nation of Jidada. The novel, which is populated entirely by animals, chronicles the fall of an oppressive regime while exploring the cyclical nature of political tyranny and the resilient spirit of ordinary citizens.
The story begins during the twilight of the reign of the “Father of the Nation,” an Old Horse who has ruled Jidada as a tyrant for nearly four decades. He is increasingly frail, suffering from dementia, and losing his grip on power. During the annual Independence Day rally, his ambitious wife, a donkey known as Dr. Sweet Mother, publicly attacks Vice President Tuvius “Tuvy” Delight Shasha with the aim to secure her own succession to the Seat of Power.
After the rally, Tuvy survives a series of suspicious assassination attempts. He realises that his life is in danger. Therefore, he meets with General Judas Goodness Reza and other elite military dogs (the “Defenders”), who agree to protect the revolution from Dr. Sweet Mother’s faction. Tuvy flees to exile in South Africa. Shortly after, the military orchestrates a bloodless coup. The Defenders surround the Old Horse in the House of Power and force him to sign a resignation letter. Jidadans flood the streets in euphoric celebration, believing their long nightmare of oppression is finally over.
Tuvy returns from exile and is anointed the “Saviour” of Jidada. He promises a prosperous “New Dispensation” and declares that the country will finally hold “#freefairncredible” elections. However, the new regime quickly proves to be identical to the old one. The ruling elite systematically loots the country’s wealth and sends the economy into a death spiral. Jidada becomes a “Queuenation,” where desperate citizens spend their lives sleeping in massive lines for fuel, cash, bread, and basic necessities.
Tuvy ultimately wins the rigged election. When furious citizens protest the fraudulent results and subsequent skyrocketing fuel prices, Tuvy unleashes the Defenders to brutally crush the dissent. The dogs shoot civilians in the streets, shut down the internet, and conduct door-to-door raids, beating, torturing, and raping the citizens of Jidada into submission. Tuvy consolidates his dictatorship; he passes decrees to ban protests and declares himself “President for Life.”
Running parallel to the political turmoil is the personal story of Destiny, a young goat who returns to her home township of Lozikeyi after ten years in exile. She reunites with her deeply traumatised mother, Simiso, who finally reveals the horrific family secret she had kept from Destiny: the 1983 Gukurahundi massacres.
Simiso explains that shortly after Jidada’s original independence, the Old Horse’s elite Fifth Brigade systematically terrorised their region. The Defenders murdered Destiny’s grandfather (a revered liberation war hero), forced her uncle to hack his own father to pieces with an ax, and burned the rest of their family alive in a hut. Simiso herself was brutally beaten and permanently scarred.
Destiny and her mother bond over their shared trauma, as Destiny’s own body bears the scars of being beaten and tortured by Defenders during the fraudulent 2008 elections. At this point, Destiny is determined to ensure the victims are never forgotten. So, she writes a book titled The Red Butterflies of Jidada, dedicating it to the dead.
At an unauthorised “Remembrance” rally held at Uhuru Park for the nation’s “Disappeared,” Destiny takes the stage to read her manuscript. The ruthless Defender Commander Jambanja storms the rally and shoots Destiny point-blank in the chest, killing her.
Her murder sparks a profound, silent revolution. A local artist, Golden Maseko, paints red butterflies and the names of Destiny’s murdered family on Simiso’s wall. This inspires citizens from all over Jidada to travel to Lozikeyi and silently paint the names of their own murdered loved ones. Collectively, they create a massive “Wall of the Dead.”
The regime outlaws the Wall of the Dead, and Commander Jambanja arrives with a pack of dogs to arrest Simiso. However, the citizens of Lozikeyi have lost their fear. A silent mob forms a hurricane around the dogs; it beats Jambanja and his Defenders to a pulp.
The regime attempts to send full military battalions to crush Lozikeyi, but they find millions of Jidadans standing together, unafraid and prepared to die. Faced with the unbreakable will of the people, the Defenders finally realise the injustice of their actions; they strip off their uniforms, down their weapons, and join the masses.
Without the military to protect them, Tuvy’s regime collapses entirely. Tuvy is swarmed by red butterflies (the spirits of the dead) and arrested by the people to rot in prison. The Old Horse, watching from exile, dies of a broken heart.
The novel ends on a hopeful note as the youth of Jidada design a brand-new flag featuring a red lotus fire and Nehanda’s bones. This flag symbolises purification, peace, and a truly liberated Jidada.
Background of Glory
Glory was written by Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo and published in 2022. The novel is an animal fable and a political satire that focuses on African politics, government, and revolutions. It is a direct allegory for the political history and social landscape of Zimbabwe. The novel’s primary real-world inspiration is the November 2017 coup that ousted long-time Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe after nearly four decades in power. The novel captures the atmosphere of the post-Mugabe era and the dashed hopes of citizens when the new leadership embodied by Mugabe’s former vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, simply perpetuates the cycle of authoritarian rule.
As a matter of fact, the foundational trauma of the novel is based on the real-life Gukurahundi, a brutal campaign that took place in the years following the nation’s independence. The ruling Shona-dominated government unleashes an elite, North Korean-trained military unit (the Fifth Brigade) to systematically massacre Ndebele civilians under the guise of hunting down political dissidents.
Moreover, the novel grounds its fictional animal kingdom with real-life Zimbabwean touchstones. It frequently invokes Mbuya Nehanda, the revered real-life spirit medium who led an 1899-armed rebellion against British colonisers and was subsequently hanged. The novel also features real geographic locations like the city of Bulawayo, R. G. Mugabe Street, and Cecil John Rhodes’s grave at Matopo.
Bulawayo consciously builds upon the tradition of the political animal fable, with her characters actively distancing their specific, localised struggles from George Orwell’s classic by declaring, “This is not an animal farm but Jidada with a -da and another -da!” She uses an entirely nonhuman cast (horses, dogs, goats, donkeys, pigs) to satirise power dynamics, personality cults, and the mechanics of dictatorship.
While the novel is steeped in Zimbabwe’s specific history, Bulawayo dedicates the book to “all Jidadas, everywhere” who are clamouring for freedom on many fronts. She frames the allegory as a universal story of resistance against corruption and tyranny.
Setting of Glory
Glory is set in the fictional African nation of Jidada (frequently referred to by its citizens as “Jidada with a -da and another -da”). It is a “land of farm animals” populated entirely by anthropomorphic creatures such as horses, donkeys, dogs, goats, pigs, and birds. Jidada is a direct, thinly veiled stand-in for Zimbabwe. The country’s history, political crises, and the 2017 military coup that deposed its long-time leader closely parallel real-world events in Zimbabwe.
The novel’s setting spans several distinct environments within this nation. The Seat of Power and Jidada Square are the epicentre of the country’s political life, where the ruling elite govern from the House of Power and hold massive, sun-scorched patriotic rallies for the citizens. Lozikeyi is a dusty, vibrant, and noisy township characterised by potholed roads and bustling streets. It is home to ordinary citizens like the returnee Destiny, her traumatised mother Simiso, and the spirit medium known as the Duchess.
Bulawayo is described as a rural village region in the Tuli valley (though it shares its name with the real-world Zimbabwean city). This is the ancestral home of Destiny’s family and the setting of the horrific 1983 Gukurahundi massacres. The Capital City is the nation’s capital features a chaotic central business district filled with desperate vendors. During the “New Dispensation” regime, the egotistical new president renames the capital along with almost every other street and city in the country to Tuvy City.
Beyond the physical setting of Jidada, Bulawayo sets a significant portion of the story in the digital realm; social media platforms where citizens express their outrage, organise resistance, and share the truth about the regime’s brutality. The novel includes references to global rallying cries (such as “I can’t breathe” and “Make Jidada great again”), which make the setting feel resonant with resistance movements worldwide.
Temporally, the primary events of the novel take place nearly four decades after Jidada’s Liberation War and independence from colonial rule. While Jidada was once considered a prosperous “jewel of Africa,” the setting is now defined by severe economic collapse and political tyranny.
The daily environment for the animals is grim, characterised by chronic power cuts, water shortages, and hyperinflation. Jidada becomes a “Queuenation,” where citizens spend their days and nights sleeping in massive lines outside banks, supermarkets, and fuel stations just to survive. Socially, it is a police state ruled by fear, heavily patrolled by “Defenders” (vicious military dogs) who suppress protests with batons, tear gas, live ammunition, and internet shutdowns.
The narrative also shifts back in time to the early post-independence years, specifically April 1983, to explore the foundational trauma of the nation during a government-sanctioned genocide.
About the Author
NoViolet Bulawayo (the pen name of Elizabeth Zandile Tshele, born December 10, 1981) is a critically acclaimed Zimbabwean novelist and short story writer. She is widely celebrated for her vibrant and distinctive narrative voice, which blends the oral storytelling traditions of her childhood with sharp social critique and political satire. Bulawayo made history as the first Black African woman to be shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize. Her work navigates the complexities of post-colonial identity, political tyranny, displacement, and the immigrant experience.
Bulawayo was born in the village of Tsholotsho, Zimbabwe. She grew up experiencing the post-independence era of the country before moving to the United States at the age of 18. She attended Texas A&M University-Commerce and Southern Methodist University for her Bachelor of Arts and Master’s degrees. She earned her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Cornell University, where she received the Truman Capote Fellowship. She has held several other prestigious writing fellowships which include the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. She has also taught fiction writing at both Cornell and Stanford.
We Need New Names (2013) is Bulawayo’s debut novel. It grew out of her award-winning short story “Hitting Budapest,” which won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing. The novel follows ten-year-old Darling and her group of friends in a shantytown named Paradise in Zimbabwe. The children spend their days stealing guavas, playing games, and dealing with the harsh realities of a crumbling society. The narrative shifts as Darling moves to the United States to live with an aunt and has to explore the dislocation, alienation, and complex identity negotiations of the immigrant experience. The novel was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize. It won multiple awards; some of which are the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Etisalat Prize for Literature. It is the most translated book in modern Zimbabwean history.
Glory (2022) is her highly anticipated second novel. It is a bold political satire inspired by the 2017 coup that ousted long-time Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe. The novel was written in the tradition of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and narrated by a dynamic, vivid chorus of animal voices. It satirises political excesses, corruption, and the fight for liberation. Glory was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize.
Bulawayo is the kind of writer that writes characters who possess an incredible, bulletproof optimism and humanity, even in the face of poverty, displacement, and oppression. Her writing is shaped by the potent rhythm of orature and storytelling.
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