Independence Day, midafternoon. The citizens of Jidada stand under a blazing sun in the public square where they’ve been waiting since morning. At last arrives the Father of the Nation — revolutionary, liberator, tyrant, who’s ruled for 40 years — and the square erupts in ecstatic noise. He is the Old Horse, and the citizens are cows, goats, pigs and geese.

This is the opening of the novel “Glory,” a variation on George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” with a surging power of its own.

Sparked by the 2017 fall of Zimbabwe’s longtime leader, Robert Mugabe, “Glory” depicts an African nation that wrested itself from colonial rule and struggles with ethnic strife, brutal repression, corruption and Western exploitation. The story follows the last days of the Old Horse’s rule and the rise of his vice president, Tuvy. Though there are parallels to real people and events in Zimbabwe, where former Stanford University Stegner fellow NoViolet Bulawayo grew up, a detailed knowledge of its history isn’t needed to appreciate Bulawayo’s audacious act of transforming history into fable.

The characters quack, bleat and bray. They also scheme, pray, tweet and gossip. They sell fruit by the side of the road, fly in private jets and attend Davos. By presenting common barnyard animals we know from earliest childhood, Bulawayo invites us to see with fresh eyes. There is satisfying ridicule in watching Sweet Mother, the grasping wife of the aging leader, preen about as a donkey. But Bulawayo elicits our sympathy too by making her all too human, thwarted in her desire to be a leader in her own right.

With ingenuity and skill, Bulawayo masterfully controls her story, switching among plotlines, voices and themes, and between past and present, with history never forgotten. From political intrigue surrounding the Seat of Power, the novel widens to include an array of ordinary citizens who sometimes speak to us directly in a chorus of “we.” A heroine named Destiny appears, returned to her stoic mother after 10 years in America. Her choices give the tale a necessary drive.

The scope is huge, but the pace seldom lags, helped along by short, titled sections, a format suggesting Bible verse. Absurdity and irony abound, providing entertainment and wincing recognition that this book has a lot to say about our own political reality. The feared, unbridled leader is celebrated for his awesome ability to win any election “regardless of how the electorate voted.” When violence arrives, as it must, it lands like a hoof to the chest.

Only rarely does Bulawayo press a little too hard on messaging, a hazard of political satire. Mostly, she uses the tools of language, like imagery and repetition, to make her points. Words “were power,” she tells us. “Words were weapons … magic … church … wealth … life.”

I’ll leave it to you to decide whether the late-breaking action takes an improbable turn. One thing is for sure: On Bulawayo’s animal farm, citizens are powerful, and stories will raise the dead.

“Glory”
By NoViolet Bulawayo
(Viking; 416 pages.; $27)

Book Passage presents NoViolet Bulawayo, hosted by Skylight:Virtual event. 6 p.m. March 16. Free. Registration required.www.bookpassage.com