NoViolet Bulawayo interview: 'Tyranny isn’t just a Zimbabwean problem'

Where do you write? What does your working space look like?

I write wherever I find myself; the only requirements are absolute solitude, a big desk and a big comfy bed, both for sleeping and writing.

When things are going well my working space is messy - Post-its on every imaginable surface, paper everywhere, stacks of notebooks. I remember in the middle of writing Glory, during a residency, coming to find my room all made up, my Post-its arranged in neat stacks by the wonderful ladies who kept the place clean. This is to say my working space can get extreme.

Critics have drawn obvious parallels between Glory and Orwell’s Animal Farm. Were there any other books or authors that influenced you while writing the book? Animals feature heavily in African folklore - how much of that influenced you?

Folklore influenced me heavily - thanks to a childhood of constant exposure to my grandmother’s fantastic animal stories that were generally meant to educate and entertain us way before books. I came to Orwell’s Animal Farm from this formative background, and it’s important to acknowledge it as an equally compelling influence.

Besides Orwell, other authors who meant a lot to me for this novel include Gabriel García Márquez, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Junot Díaz, Patrick Chamoiseau, Mario Vargas Llosa and Ahmadou Kourouma.

What made you decide to write a novel based on recent events in Zimbabwe as an allegory seen through the eyes of animals? Why not humans?

Animals gave me the distance from a public drama that was often unfolding and changing shape as I was writing it (first as a work of non-fiction), and that understandably attracted so much attention it felt I was in a kind of weird competition with different commentators.

The animal kingdom freed me to make the story mine, deliver it on my own terms, with as much (at least, one hopes) freshness, inventiveness and madness as I dared bring on board. I must say the mind-blowing absurdity of Zimbabwe’s politics also made the choice the right fit, certainly the terms of reference by my frustrated countryfolk on social media suggested the same and influenced some of my choices.

The ‘Father of the Nation’ in the book is a horse; another main character, Destiny, is a goat - what made you alight on certain animals for certain characters?

There was some loose reliance on general characteristics of animals that informed the casting process, for example the Father of the Nation’s power is aligned to his physical might and so it made sense to make him a horse, it being the larger and more powerful of farm animals, while Defenders (the army and the police), often being violent and vicious in Glory, definitely needed to be dogs.

But many of the choices were driven by what would work for the story, without burdening my characters with having to adhere to specific or expected animal traits. I could create fresh, unpredictable characters this way.