The Polygamist’s creator says women see themselves reflected in her Netflix hit

ZIMBABWE: When Sue Nyathi sent her debut novel The Polygamist to publishers, “they thought there was no market for the book” about a married Zimbabwean man and the women he seduces, she says.

So the Zimbabwean author found her own editor, typesetter and artist, and in 2012 published 500 copies herself. It defied the publishers’ predictions and became a huge hit.

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It has now been adapted for Netflix and is in the top 10 of the platform’s most streamed series in more than 60 countries, reaching number two in the United States. Hollywood actress Taraji P Henson said the series had her in a “chokehold” and she binge-watched all 22 episodes in a single day.

It is not, Nyathi is careful to point out, a straightforward story about polygamy. The traditional practice of polygamy is not foreign to her. Her mother’s side the family was polygamous for generations.

Her grandfather, who died in 1979, had five wives, her great-grandfather had 11. Her grandmother, the first woman his grandfather married, presided as matriarch over a farm where the wives lived together, and often helped choose the newcomers herself.