A Girl Named Disaster

infobox Book |
name = A Girl Named Disaster
title_orig =
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image_caption = Cover of first edition, showing Nhamo
author = Nancy Farmer
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country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Children's novel
publisher = Orchard Books
release_date = September 1996
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
pages = 320 pp (first edition, hardback)
isbn = ISBN 0531095398 (first edition, hardback)
preceded_by =
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"A Girl Named Disaster" is a 1996 novel by Nancy Farmer. It is set in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, where a young girl named Nhamo (which means "disaster" in Shona) is told by a shaman that she will have to marry the brother of a man her father murdered, to rid her village of an epidemic of cholera. The brother of Gore Mtoko is said to be a middle-aged and evil man who is already married. Nhamo is instructed by her ill grandmother to run away and find her father in Zimbabwe. Along the way she experiences constant isolation, loneliness and encounters baboons, fearsome leopards, and hidden landmines. Guided by her cultural beliefs and her dreams, Nhamo triumphs over all these obstacles and finds her way to freedom.

Farmer won the Newbery Honor for the book in 1997.