Who Fears Death
2010
- magic
- genocide
- fiction
- africa, fiction
- fiction, general
- fiction, fantasy, general
- dystopias
- fantasy fiction
- single women, fiction
- mothers and daughters, fiction
The story
Born into post-apocalyptic Africa to a mother who was raped after the slaughter of her entire tribe, Onyesonwu is tutored by a shaman and discovers that her magical destiny is to end the genocide of her people.
What it’s like
Dense, sun-scorched prose that moves like a storyteller leaning close over a fire: Nnedi Okorafor writes in a voice that is direct, lyrical and unhurried, pausing for the textures of a desert world where dust hangs in dry air, markets smell of spice and hot metal, and the sky is bleached white by heat. The vibe is fierce and mournful, a hard-edged epic with flashes of warmth in friendship and song, best suited to a long slow afternoon or a wakeful night when you have the attention for it. Its pace is steady, building through training, travel and confrontation toward a reckoning, and its emotional register is heavy but not hopeless. The story follows a young woman learning who she is and what she owes to her mother and her people, with love, grief and anger threaded through every chapter. Intensity is high: sexual violence, war, massacre and bodily harm appear on the page, sometimes graphically, and the dread is constant rather than gratuitous. This suits readers who want an ambitious, mythic African fantasy with moral weight, not a gentle or comforting read.
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