The immigrant experience, which this novel is obviously engaged with, is a fraught topic in South Africa, and a very difficult thing to represent. It's also quite a popular topic, especially this year, in African fiction - Chimamanda Adichie talks about it,Taiye Selasi talks about it. Why? And why did you want to write a book about the immigrant experience?
NoViolet Bulawayo: "I don't think there's any particular reason why it's popular, in that sense; writers are naturally interested in those kind of stories and experiences. So this book might be a coincidence - that said, I am moved by things that happen around me, and do feel a need to respond to them. And given our location - all three of us, for instance, while we live all over the world, we do all come from somewhere - it's a time of great movement, from the African continent to elsewhere. I think maybe this is overemphasised, though; this book responds to that experience of movement as an accident of storytelling, more than as an objective."
- Ikhide
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