Every once in a while, a book comes along that leaves you so stunned that it almost feels like passing through a portal; that hair-raising intuition that you've just read something unlike anything else you've experienced before and have no idea if or when you'll read something like it again. A book that leaves you changed in some way, reminding you of the deep connection between artist and audience and how the stories we take into ourselves form us as people, as cultures, as a species.
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor is one such book, at least in my very strong opinion. I read this novel over the past few weeks and cannot emphasize enough how incredible it is. Okorafor is best known for writing Africanfuturism and Africanjujuism — sci-fi and fantasy centered on Africa, its cultures, and myths — and has won just about every major award in the speculative fiction field with works like her Binti novellas, Lagoon, the Nsibidi Scripts, and Who Fears Death, which is being adapted for television at HBO with George R.R. Martin attached as a producer.
All that's to say that Okorafor is about as established as it's possible to get in the genre fiction field, and very well-regarded for her incisive and imaginative works. I've read a few of Okorafor's other books and always enjoyed them...but her latest is a step above. I cannot emphasize enough how much I loved Death of the Author, and I want to tell you about it — and why you should read it.
The following review contains LIGHT SPOILERS for the set-up and structure of Death of the Author. Trust me, I don't want to ruin any big plot points for you, so if you haven't read it, continue without fear.
Death of the Author official description
"The future of storytelling is here.
Life has thrown Zelu some curveballs over the years, but when she's suddenly dropped from her university job and her latest novel is rejected, all in the middle of her sister's wedding, her life is upended. Disabled, unemployed and from a nosy, high-achieving, judgmental family, she's not sure what comes next.
In her hotel room that night, she takes the risk that will define her life - she decides to write a book VERY unlike her others. A science fiction drama about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. And everything changes.
What follows is a tale of love and loss, fame and infamy, of extraordinary events in one world, and another. And as Zelu's life evolves, the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur.
Because sometimes a story really does have the power to reshape the world."
Book review: Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
At its heart, Death of the Author is the story of Zelu Onyenezi-Onyedele, a paraplegic Nigerian-American author who, after a string of bad luck, writes a sci-fi novel on impulse. She sends the book out to her agent after a decade of beating her head against the publishing industry, and to her great surprise it takes off in spectacular fashion, launching her into literary superstardom. But this comes with just as many lows as highs, and Zelu's demanding but loving family often adds to her stresses. Death of the Author has lots to say about modern publishing, about the Hollywood whitewashing of BIPOC stories, about the relationship between artist and audience, about social media, about how we navigate staying in touch with our roots in an evolving world, and more.
But the book isn't just Zelu's story. If you've read Okorafor's previous works, you might be expecting more of a sci-fi or fantasy element, and you'll find it here. Death of the Author toes the line between literary fiction and science fiction, and has an extremely interesting format. Some chapters are told from Zelu's perspective, which read more like lit fic. Others are interviews with her family members, which show how they each view different aspects of her from the outside. And others are chapters from the sci-fi book Zelu wrote, titled Rusted Robots, about an android named Ankara who resides in a post-apocalyptic Nigeria where humanity has all but died out and been replaced by artificial intelligence. The Ankara chapters are where most of the sci-fi elements come into play.
By the end of the book, the lines between these realities blur as Zelu's story speeds toward a conclusion that is both surprising and very satisfying. (Really, I can't emphasize that enough; I loved the ending to this book.) The various types of chapters compound on one another, with Ankara and Zelu's stories each building out the thematic edifices of the other. The result is transcendent.
Obviously, none of this works without Okorafor's writing being as good as it is. In the hands of a less-skilled author, this novel wouldn't have worked nearly as well. But Okorafor is a master of her craft, and she brings all her considerable talents to bear. The line-by-line prose of Death of the Author is polished to a mirror sheen, making it very easy to get lost in the story. The characterization for Zelu, Ankara, and all the other people and robots in their respective orbits is deep as well as immediate; I found myself grimacing in sympathy for some of the things Zelu goes through right in the opening chapters. Okorafor writes characterization and dialogue as well as grand thematic explorations with laser precision, proving you don't need an excessively long book to have exceptionally deep characters or a story that feels sweeping in scope.
Death of the Author is a dense book (and that is to its benefit)
For all the gushing I've done so far, there are a few things I want to point out to make sure you're as informed as possible before deciding whether you should dive into this beast of a novel. The first is that this is a dense book, which makes it perfect for a slow, thoughtful read. I often paused between chapters to digest things, and even took a break around the halfway mark to read a quick cozy fantasy for a few days before plunging into the back half of the novel (which I devoured much faster than the front half). That's not a drawback — I found this reading experience to be extremely enjoyable because I like when a book forces you to slow down and think — but I felt it worth mentioning for the obsessive binge readers out there.
The other is that this book is almost more of meta-fiction than a traditional novel, because of how it toys with reader expectations, as well as its deeply realized themes and resonance with current cultural events. If you expect a more traditional sci-fi story in the vein of some of Okorafor's previous works, you may be disappointed. Death of the Author is searingly unique, and it leans just as much on its literary fiction side as it does its sci-fi side. That makes it a book I wouldn't necessarily recommend for every genre reader...but for the readers who do enjoy a piercing, dense, thought-provoking novel, I cannot recommend it enough.
Verdict
Death of the Author is a masterwork of modern speculative fiction, and arguably Nnedi Okorafor's best book yet. It's an unusual novel that defies easy definition, combining Africanfuturism, speculative fiction, and literary fiction; the result is magnificent, weaving multiple narratives into an incredibly unique and powerful rumination on family, storytelling, and life. Death of the Author is not only one of my favorite books I've read in the recent past, but probably one of my new favorite novels that I've read ever. I genuinely can't remember the last time a book left me so impacted. A five star read, cover-to-cover.
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