From Self-Publishing to Netflix: Sue Nyathi on Writing, Polygamy and Affordability

Sue Nyathi's debut novel arrived at publishers' desks with a problem: nobody thought anyone would want to read it. The story of a Zimbabwean businessman who seduces and secretly marries multiple women while his first wife believes herself in a monogamous union seemed, to the gatekeepers of publishing, unmarketable. So in 2012, Nyathi did what many rejected writers dream of but few attempt. She found her own editor, her own typesetter, her own artist. She printed 500 copies and released the book herself. The Polygamist became a phenomenon.

Now, fourteen years later, the novel has been adapted into a Netflix series that ranks in the top ten most-watched shows across more than sixty countries. In the United States, it climbed to number two. Taraji P. Henson, the Hollywood actress, described the series as having her in a "chokehold"—she watched all twenty-two episodes in a single sitting. What the publishers had deemed unsellable had become impossible to ignore.

But Nyathi is careful about what her story actually examines. She grew up surrounded by polygamy. Her grandfather, who died in 1979, had five wives. Her great-grandfather had eleven. On her mother's side of the family, the practice stretched back generations. Her grandmother, the first woman her grandfather married, presided over a farm where the wives lived together and sometimes helped select newcomers themselves. "There was no infighting, because everyone knew their place," Nyathi recalls. It was open, consensual, structured. "Everybody knows who's who in the zoo."

What she began noticing as a young working woman in Harare in 2001 was something entirely different. Men who claimed to be monogamous were living double and triple lives—secret women, secret households, secret children—all built on deception rather than agreement. This is what Nyathi calls "the modernised, or perverted, version" of polygamy. "I'm not against polygamy," she says. "What I'm against is the lack of agency. It's wrong for the goalposts to be shifted once you're inside."

In her novel, Joyce marries Jonasi believing she is entering a union of two. He is a wealthy, self-made businessman in a patriarchal society where he makes all the decisions. Joyce helped build his empire, yet her finances depend entirely on him. The same vulnerability traps his other wives. Without economic independence, without the power to negotiate, they cannot protect themselves—not even in the most intimate moments. An HIV thread runs through the story because, as Nyathi notes, when you cannot say no to sex, you cannot demand safety. The Netflix adaptation moves the story to South Africa, shoots it in Zulu with subtitles, and reduces Jonasi's wives in number. But the novel itself is told entirely through the voices of the women, each explaining how she found herself trapped with a man who would never be faithful.

The series has become a mirror that some societies do not want to see. A Kenyan civil servant called for it to be banned, arguing that it conflates polygamy with cheating and abuse. Nyathi remains unmoved. Cultures evolve, she says. Practices get diluted, corrupted, transformed. She is simply showing what has happened to this one. After the series aired, Amnesty South Africa distributed guidance on narcissistic abuse and the steps women could take to leave. Women write to Nyathi to say they see themselves in Joyce. Some write to say they are married to a Jonasi and want out. "For some people, this is not just a series," Nyathi says. "It's their lived reality."

But beneath the success lies a question that visibly frustrates her: who gets to write at all? Nyathi wanted to be a writer from childhood. Her parents steered her toward something more practical. She spent nearly two decades in finance, working as an investment analyst, a job that taught her to see writing as both craft and business. She wrote The Polygamist in the evenings after work, then left corporate life at forty to pursue writing full time. She is now forty-eight. "People say, 'Oh, you're an overnight success,'" she says. "Not at all. The recognition is overnight, but the work has been put in over many years, and I've made a lot of sacrifices."

Most writers cannot live on their books, she notes, especially not in Africa. Successful writers are often supported by wealthy partners, by grants, by residencies. Nyathi had none of these. She was a single mother putting her son through school, juggling various jobs to keep writing. Between starting a book and finishing it, years pass. Bills still need paying. "Writing is a luxury that most people can't afford," she says. The cost is measured in the voices never heard, the stories never told. She also observes an imbalance in how African writing travels globally. "It's easier for an African writer published overseas to gain traction. Books are traditionally sold down to us. It's hard for our work to sell upwards." The Netflix effect has given her the visibility that four novels and more than a decade of writing on politically charged topics never provided. She is now finishing the first draft of a historical novel she has been working on for two years. To any woman who thinks she has a book in her but no money, she offers this: start with a pen and paper. Do it for love. "Money should never be the motivation. The love is what will fuel you when it gets hard."