'The Polygamist' author discusses long road from obscurity to Netflix sensation

A self-published novel by a Zimbabwean author that struggled to find a distributor is now the source of one of this year's biggest online hits.

"The Polygamist," based on Sue Nyathi's 2012 debut novel, became one of Netflix's most-watched non-English series within weeks of its June release, trending across Africa, the Caribbean, and parts of Europe.

The series forms part of a wider pattern of works by African authors driving major screen productions at a scale and ambition not seen before.

"For a long time, the spotlight was usually on African authors who are published overseas, and those books are sold down to the rest of the continent," Nyathi said in an interview with CGTN Africa. "It is difficult to sell books. So for me, this is actually a triumphant moment."

Nyathi, born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, described her journey to success as more of a curve, with many challenges along the way.

"Being a writer, you need to be thick-skinned. I mentioned that I couldn’t get a publisher for this book, The Polygamist, when it came out. I wrote it in 2010, and then I spent the whole of 2011 with my editor sending out query letters, and there was no interest,” she said.

She kept writing.

After The Polygamist came The Gold Diggers, A Family Affair, An Angel's Demise, and Rubies and Rain.

In 2018, she left a decade-long career in finance to write full-time. Netflix came on board in 2024, fourteen years after she first put the story to paper.

"You can imagine it's been a long time," she said. "And sometimes I would forget about it and carry on with life."

The series, produced by South Africa's Stained Glass Productions, takes Nyathi's Zimbabwean characters into a South African setting.

Characters were consolidated and storylines expanded, changes Nyathi said she does not oppose.

"The changes didn't take away from the story; they actually added to the story," she said. "It still maintained the essence of the original."

The production model is itself significant. The source material was Zimbabwean; the production house was South African; and the series featured several directors, including Nigerian filmmaker Akin Omotoso—a pan-African collaboration that delivered a story to a global audience.

Online, debate has centered on whether the patriarch Jonasi Gomora, played by S'dumo Mtshali, is a villain or a victim, and whether the women around him, led by Gugu Gumede's Joyce, were victims or complicit.

"I just wanted to write a story that would get people talking about the uncomfortable things that, as a society, we tend to shove under the rug," she said. "People are saying their fathers are like Jonasi, or they could see their moms in some of the women in the story. It just goes to show that, as a society, there is a lot of brokenness and we need healing."

The success of The Polygamist is not an isolated event.

Nigerian author Sefi Atta's novel Swallow was adapted for Netflix in 2021 by director Kunle Afolayan. South African crime writer Deon Meyer's Heart of the Hunter reached No. 1 on Netflix’s English Films chart after its March 2024 release, accumulating millions of views in its first week.

Each adaptation has found audiences well beyond its country of origin, testing and repeatedly confirming the premise that African stories do not need to be diluted to travel.

The argument is now being made at the level of the Hollywood blockbuster with Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Blood and Bone, a Nigerian-inspired fantasy novel whose trilogy has spent a combined 175 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and sold nearly three million copies worldwide. Its film adaptation is currently in post-production at Paramount Pictures ahead of a January 15, 2027, IMAX release.

The film features South Africa’s Thuso Mbedu in the lead role alongside Viola Davis, Idris Elba, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cynthia Erivo, and Regina King.

What both projects share, besides African authorship, is creative control retained closer to the source. Adeyemi co-wrote her own screenplay. Nyathi's book is credited in the series.

For Nyathi, the moment is both personal and larger than herself.

"We exist, and our stories are valid. People are going to start looking at us," she said.