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A review by erine
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
adventurous
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I blithely tackled this book not knowing much about the premise, just that there was a disabled author at the heart of it. After the first chapter (and taking into account the implications of the title) I quickly assumed that the author dies somewhere along the way. And I wasn't entirely wrong, but I was wrong in a way that surprised me so completely and changed how I looked at the whole story.
To start, Zelu is not quite likeable. She has an independence that means she butts heads with a lot of people around her: family and siblings, her students and administration, the men she hooks up with. Even as she cuts ties and forges new ones, it takes a long time before her prickliness softens even a little. Part of this is how her family (and larger society) treat her disability. After becoming paraplegic at 12 her relationship with the whole world changed, and Zelu grates against the lack of assistance AND against the assumptions made by others.
Early in the story, Zelu loses her job and unsuccessfully tries to sell the novel she has written. This inspires her to write something else, which becomes successful beyond her wildest dreams. The fame brings her face-to-face with questions of celebrity and how much fans should own the work they love, but right alongside the fame are conflicts about the different ways of accommodating disability and what is the "right" way to empower oneself; the whitewashing of her African-centered book as it becomes a popular movie; and what right does a family have to protect one of its own. But above all this, Zelu faces the questions and challenges of creating her own story and deciding what she owes to the people around her who offer her varying levels of support.
Reflecting many elements of Okorafor's own experience, there was just a lot to think about with this one.
The final twist hit me hard. I found myself confused about the inclusion of excerpts of Zelu's novel. Not because they were bad or uninteresting, but they did not seem obviously connected to the reality of Zelu's life in any way. And then to find out that the whole story was the ROBOT's all along. I was stunned. Others may have seen that coming, but I did not. And it changed how I thought of everything. Zelu isn't a real person, she's extinct and existing only in a robot's imagination. Her disability, her adoration of the richest man in the world, the drama of her visit to Nigeria to see her father's resting place, her dreams of being an astronaut, all of this came out of the mind of Ankara the robot. And knowing how humanity tells stories of the world's past, often full of erroneous assumptions, it threw me hard to think of what kind of assumptions might a robot have about how humans used to live; what information filled that intelligence's programming.
Absolutely blew my mind.
To start, Zelu is not quite likeable. She has an independence that means she butts heads with a lot of people around her: family and siblings, her students and administration, the men she hooks up with. Even as she cuts ties and forges new ones, it takes a long time before her prickliness softens even a little. Part of this is how her family (and larger society) treat her disability. After becoming paraplegic at 12 her relationship with the whole world changed, and Zelu grates against the lack of assistance AND against the assumptions made by others.
Early in the story, Zelu loses her job and unsuccessfully tries to sell the novel she has written. This inspires her to write something else, which becomes successful beyond her wildest dreams. The fame brings her face-to-face with questions of celebrity and how much fans should own the work they love, but right alongside the fame are conflicts about the different ways of accommodating disability and what is the "right" way to empower oneself; the whitewashing of her African-centered book as it becomes a popular movie; and what right does a family have to protect one of its own. But above all this, Zelu faces the questions and challenges of creating her own story and deciding what she owes to the people around her who offer her varying levels of support.
Reflecting many elements of Okorafor's own experience, there was just a lot to think about with this one.
Absolutely blew my mind.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism, Misogyny, and Racism
Some of the characters displayed ableism and misogyny at times. Societies at large offered up all the discriminatory attitudes. And while I could appreciate the inclusion of a transgender character, this decision seemed to verge on tokenism--your mileage may vary.