- Publisher: William Morrow & Company
- Publication date: 01/14/2025
- Pages: 448
- ISBN: 978-0-06-339114-7
- Author: Nnedi Okorafor
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor continues to confirm my opinion that Okorafor is one of the best, most original authors writing today. She blends different cultures and different universes into her stories in a unique and wonderful way. The multiple universes in Death of the Author are not the ridiculous multiverse of Marvel, rather it is a novel within a novel, a world within a world.
There is the story of Zelu, confined to a wheelchair after a childhood accident, she struggles in all areas of her life. She is an unpublished author with a novel that not even she likes. She does not seem able to maintain a long term romantic relationship. She has ‘only’ obtained a master’s degree, working as an adjunct professor, and does not measure up to her very successful siblings. She is born of Nigerian immigrants, but though they come from the same country, her parents come from different tribes with very different priorities. She is American and she is Nigerian and she doesn’t feel she really fits anywhere. Her life is a series of conflicts and contradictions.
Things come to a head for her when she is attending her sister’s wedding and finds out that she has been fired from her teaching job at the university. Disabled in an abled world, unemployed in a successful family, African to Americans, American to Nigerians, single at her sister’s wedding, Zelu seems to hit bottom. Although she has never even liked science fiction, she finds herself writing a story about ‘rusted robots’ in a near future, post human society. This novel becomes incredibly successful and she becomes a wealthy celebrity ‘overnight’.
The book goes back and forth between: interviews with Zelu’s family about her, the ongoing trajectory of her life mostly from Zelu’s POV, and excerpts from the “Rusted Robots” novel that she wrote. These three different points of view, family, Zelu and robot, all have their own voices and all seem ‘real’ and true. They also all provide emphasis and depth to the other points of view. This book is partly a story of family dynamics and how people relate, and don’t relate, to each other and their personal burdens. It is part a story of a human shaped “hume” scholar robot who is driven to gather the stories left behind by the extinct humans. It is struggling to relate to a disembodied “No Body” AI and trying to survive an upcoming war while holding the secret of even further planetary destruction.
Okorafor writes very different stories than most authors. She creates different worlds and takes you to new places. She blends formats and genres and content amazingly well. It is difficult to create a book within a book, a story within a story, and keep them both fresh and complete and true to themselves. She does a great job of this, and more. She creates the near future Chicago where Zelu lives, and Nigeria where she visits, and the later future Nigeria of the “Rusted Robots” novel. She explores the price and perks of celebrity and wealth, and the dynamics of a loving, but controlling family, and through it all, the search for ‘stories’.
So far, I’ve loved everything I read by Nnedi Okorafor, and Death of the Author might just be my favorite.
Some other things I’ve read and reviewed by Okorafor:
- Remote Control (this is the other one that is the running for my favorite)
- Noor
- Binti: The Complete Trilogy
- She Who Knows
Heinlein “Anthrophobia” Challenge ends 3/31
