“Tomorrow is where my hope lives. I can’t be normal, so I’ll be something else.”
“I will spread the word like a virus.”
All aboard the hype train – Choo! Choo! Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author (William Morrow 2025) is a beautiful marriage of literary fiction and science fiction that scratches a particular itch. If you’re new here, hello. If you’re not, you know I love genre-blending, hard to pin down and label books, particularly if the writing is sharp and fun. I’m not new to Okorafor as I’m familiar with The Nsibidi Scripts series, but this is the first non-middle grade Okorafor for me. I loved it. There’s something that made me think of Thomas Pynchon’s V., but my most recent robot read was, of course, Klara and the Sun – that’s a good comparison namely because it is heavy on the lit fic as well.
Death of the Author is a book within a book. Zelu, a paraplegic author, has written a remarkable novel, called Rusted Robots. This novel, unlike her previous works, gives her insta fame and insta cash. She becomes an international sensation. In addition to the book within a book, there are also interviews with Zelu’s family members and loved ones. Rusted Robots unfolds on the pages in snippets as Zelu’s life takes on a new trajectory following its publication.
There’s a lot to unpack with the novel. Zelu is an outsider. She is Nigerian American, her parents are Igbo and Yoruba, which already makes her a curiosity in both America and Nigeria. Added to that, she is paralyzed as a child and confined to a wheelchair. There are issues of colonialism, ableism, fealty, tokenism, cancel culture, generational trauma, and the nervous conditions of the diaspora. And then there’s Rusted Robots, a world where humans are extinct and robots roam Lagos, the two primary groups being Humes (who look like humans) and Ghosts, who don’t need a body. Both stories will test loyalties and love, define and redefine “family,” and push boundaries. And they bleed into each other in the most exciting ways.
This is a novel that needs to unfold in its own time, revealing its secrets when you read it. As such, I’m not going to say much more. Except for be prepared to want egusi soup and fufu.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 