November's book was suggested by Tanya and accepted in October's book club. Tanya has had this one on the list for awhile, since summer 2024, so it's well due.
To dodge the Thanksgiving holiday and to give us enough time to finish the book we will be meeting in the second Wednesday of December.
The author is Zimbabwean and this novel is Animal Farm but on the 2017 coup that ousted dictator Robert Mughabe - neat!
Animal Farm is a total classic so it seemed like a good one to see redone for a modern time. The author was a finalist for the Man Booker prize so she has some award credit.
Tanya has graciously offered her house as the location - so we'll be doing dinner and the book club there. The price of entry is that you adore her cats with your whole heart.
She will be making Chili and sweet rolls, and will have wine available for dinner. She invites people to bring appetizers, desserts, beers and vegetarian options if they want - sound off in the comments if you're bringing something.
From Goodreads:
Glory centers around the unexpected fall of Old Horse, a long-serving leader of a fictional country, and the drama that follows for a rumbustious nation of animals on the path to true liberation. Inspired by the unexpected fall by coup, in November 2017, of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president of nearly four decades, Bulawayo's bold, vividly imagined novel shows a country imploding, narrated by a chorus of animal voices who unveil the ruthlessness and cold strategy required to uphold the illusion of absolute power, and the imagination and bullet-proof optimism to overthrow it completely.
As with her debut novel We Need New Names, Bulawayo's fierce voice and lucid imagery immerses us in the daily life of a traumatized nation, revealing the dazzling life force and irrepressible wit that lies barely concealed beneath the surface of seemingly bleak circumstances. At the center of this tumult is Destiny, who has returned to Jidada from exile to bear witness to revolution--and focus on the unofficial history and the potential legacy of the women who have quietly pulled the strings in this country.
The animal kingdom--its connection to our primal responses and resonance in the mythology, folktales, and fairytales that define cultures the world over--unmasks the surreality of contemporary global politics to help us understand our world more clearly, even as Bulwayo plucks us right out of it. Glory is a blockbuster, an exhilarating ride, and crystalizes a turning point in history with the texture and nuance that only the greatest of fiction can.
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Interested in suggesting a book? Bring it up to me at a meeting (or after by Meetup messages) and we can talk about it, if it sounds like it will fit I will add it to the list to be voted on by the group. There are some genre, content and page length restrictions but we're down to give most things a shot.
I have made a Google Doc that people can view to publicize the current set of suggestions see my notes on them. I've included an introduction to make it clear what I look for, how I suggest books and how to interact with the system.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bpxyKJlZC08MduYEdX8_uOBWu_FpIqJh2NxwFsMHfIA/edit?usp=sharing
