"𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐛𝐞, 𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭."

4.5/5⭐️

𝑨𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒐𝒐𝒌:

Death of the author follows the journey of two interrelated story‘s, Zelu‘s personal story, who’s a disabled, Naijamerican women and the story of her novels robotic Main character Ankara.

At 32 years old, Zelu looses her job as an Adjunction professor for creative writing and has to move back in with her parents. Going through a rollercoaster of emotions, while not knowing what do with her life, Zelu starts writing a book. Being a genre she has never written before, she writes a Science fiction Novel.
Never has she expected that this book will completely change her life.

Ankara is a robot with a mission. A mission to safe the earth from extinction. Humans are gone, now there‘s only Humes and NoBodies left and it is in their responsibility to protect and care for the world as once humans did. Although Humes and NoBodies are in a conflict with each other, Ankara, as a Hume, finds herself forming an unexpected friendship with the enemy.

𝑹𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘:

I love Zelu‘s story. I love her strong will her strength and courage. I adored her for her bravery and sometimes I even liked her stubbornness. Zelu teaches you, that no matter who your are, what you are, no matter if you have the privilege of being healthy or of you have a disability, you can achieve your goals. Do not let anyone command you or control you, you are your own person. You make your own decisions. I loved following her journey to self acceptance and self love. Zelu is amazing and I think she deserves the world.

I also enjoyed the plot of the science fiction novel that was well integrated into the book. Ankara has a lot of similarities with Zelu. Both of them are going through major changes in their lives, regarding acceptance, self love, morals and friendships.

I don‘t know much about African/Nigerian culture, but I could tell that family is the highest priority. I liked how Zelu's family played a part in this books, not only when it came to her decision making, but the book also inlcudes the different pov‘s in form of interviews. The interviews offered small insights into Zelu‘s life growing up and supported her complex character creation very well.

Zelu, a Nigerian-American with paraplegia from a high-achieving family, has hit rock bottom. Having just lost her job, and received a rejection for her novel, she starts to write something completely out of her ordinary, a sci fi with robots and AI set in a post-human Nigeria. The novel is an instant bestseller, taking the world by storm and catapulting her into unimaginable wealth and fame. All the while she has to navigate her family’s expectations and fears, her own doubts, hypervisibility and sudden, unimaginable opportunities.

Death Of The Author is an ambitious work. It tackles ableism, the immigrant experience for Nigerian Americans both in the US and Nigeria, difficult family relationships, publishing, social media, near future technology as well as far future robots and AI. If that sounds like a lot of subjects, it is, and some are better fleshed out than others.

Right away I want to give props for the writing. This book is very, almost compulsively, readable. And, when subjects are given the space to breathe, they are tackled with nuance and a very deft hand. I liked Zelu, I liked our robots, and I liked the structure of the story. There are three threads, the main plot that follows Zelu, the android/ai storyline and, peppered throughout, statements from different characters in Zelu’s life about what happened. A lot of tension is built up to see where these threads will intersect.

But, as mentioned, this book tries to tackle a lot of issues and I often found myself wishing that there could have been a greater focus on fewer plotlines. I especially found the publishing threads to be underdeveloped, oftentimes the fact that Zelu had written a book felt rather incidental, it could have been almost anything that had given her this level of fame. For a story that was seemingly so invested in storytelling it felt like an odd problem to have. Some of the characterisation seemed to suffer from this as well, family members felt one way until they suddenly didn’t just so the story could move along. Certain elements would be brought into the story, even seemingly important ones, just to be completely ignored.

My main issue, however, is the ending. It’s obviously extremely difficult to talk about it without spoiling the book so I won’t go into too much depth. I mentioned above that there was a tension in seeing how the disparate parts would come together and, in my opinion, they sadly didn’t. More than that, though, I think the ending took away from the more poignant parts of the story. Sadly I found the whole less than the sum of its parts.

DNF at 56%
Sorry, but no.
First of all, this is NOT a science fiction book. It's a family drama in which everyone is awful, and respect and affection are measured by success. And being a successful writer is not a success. Successful people are those who are doctors, layers, or own worldwide corporations. If you aren't one of these, then you don't deserve to even be looked at. Love? What's that?
It's also a book about being black, being Nigerian, and about Nigerian culture, especially its food.
Sorry, but this is not what I had expected.

Death of the Author is a stunning book! I adore stories within stories, the depth of Nnedi Okorafor’s writing has left me speechless.

“Don’t get lost in the woods, Zelu. I think that’s why Msizi brought you here, to the desert. So you wouldn’t get lost in yourself.”

Zelu is an incredible main character; the depiction of disability felt incredibly accurate with trying to navigate familial expectations and the infantilisation that happens to disabled people. My heart was broken for Zelu so many times, her struggle to connect with her family, her guilt about her accident and the loss of her father hit really hard. I read this book around the time of my own father’s anniversary and the grief was so visceral and raw.

“Zelu had never heard her mother make noises like this before. The anguish vibrated through her, rattled her bones.”; “He has earned the right to rest and wander. It’s a terrible loss for those he left, but we will all celebrate his life, too.”

Nnedi Okorafor has a truly amazing talent and I cannot wait to read more from her back catalog. I cannot recommend Death of the Author highly enough!

This was a very impressive piece of work, and I'm amazed at how much Okorafor has grown as an author!! I loved the complexity of Zelu as a character, I loved the difficult family dynamics, I loved how present Nigerian culture was, and I really loved the rusted robots chapters. There was so much packed in here and for the most part I really enjoyed every single aspect, but especially Zelu as a character. If we could just all have the drive and stubbornness to be true to ourselves as she does!

I only wish it dug deeper into the theme of author vs. audience - I felt like Zelu avoided this so much that it kind of detracted from my experience, although I understand why she did this. I just wanted more of this, more of her interactions with her fans, more with her publisher and the industry I guess? Still, this is me being very nitpicky, and it didn't really affect my enjoyment of the story that much.

All in all, fantastic story, and I think if you like Yellowface and science fiction, this is right up your alley.

I am nothing if not the key audience for this book: I love soft sci-fi, I love books about books, I love messy sibling relationships, and I love stories about cultural or ancestral connections. And, having not yet read Nnedi Okorafor before, I knew by the first page that I was going to enjoy this writing.

However, even with all of those things stacked in its favour, it's hard to love a book when you think almost every single character is unbearable- and not in a fun way. The writing and the weaving of litfic with sci-fi bump this to a high 3 stars, but the characters and the execution of the plot? Yeah, that was a struggle at times.

Thank you to the publisher, Gollancz, and to NetGalley for the ARC.

Thank you to Net-Galley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I will start out by saying that the Nigerian and Nigerian-American setting and culture within this book are seriously relieving to read for all of us who have been so inundated with Western ideas and literature. Okorafor’s works are always excellent in that regard and it’s something I enjoy every time.

We are treated to two stories within this novel, the main book being Zelu’s life and story and the secondary book being the Rusted Robot chapters. I found the ratio and timing of these two stories to be pretty well done, keeping me interested in both of them. I read this book quickly and think it had a lot to do with enjoying the jumps from one story to the other.

The Rusted Robot chapters are interesting but they read like a plot synopsis, not a novel. I felt pretty forgiving about that because I think to accomplish this type of book-within-a-book you either have to leave out huge chunks of plot or you have to leave out character exploration and world-building. I respect the choice to go with the plot and leave the excellence of the book up to the reader’s imagination, but I can also see how this could be an issue for a reader who doesn’t feel up to suspending quite so much disbelief.

A lot happens in Zelu’s portion of the book but I would like to focus on Zelu’s family. I experienced a lot of red herrings with Zelu’s family. I kept thinking their discouragement had to do with some scary information that was about to be revealed to the reader and then each time it turned out that they were just…being discouraging. It felt each time like a strange and unnecessary plot device rather than real character reactions. This was disappointing because at other times Zelu’s family was such a vibrant and complicated character unit! My favorite part of the book, hands down, were the chapters around (Spoiler!). That representation of the complexities of grief, family, and culture was the most beautiful and intuitive writing in the entire book. I love those chapters.

My main critique with Death of the Author is that it tries to do too much, even setting aside the Rusted Robot chapters. This is truest for me with the ending. So much gets thrown into the mix so quickly that I am actually not 100% sure that I understood what happened in the last 5 chapters. I re-read them to write a clearer review and still just feel confused. If anybody who’s finished the book wants to help me out here I would love to talk! I feel this book would have been a lot more solid with fewer twists and reveals because although I was interested in all of them (with perhaps the exception of the final Rusted Robot chapter) there was just no chance to properly explain or explore almost any of them. So many good ideas, just too many to cram into a single novel!

This story was very so interesting. There is two stories : One from the author and one from the robots. And both stories are amazing. The stories are complex and pull you in. Nnedi Okorafor way of writing is incredible.

My one 'bad' point, which is not the book but the marketing : it was recommended to me as science fiction, but I don't think it's the main genre at all. So adjust your expectation before going in. It's more literary fiction I think. But it's definitely worth a read.

Aunque he leído bastantes novelas de Nnedi Okorafor, creo que Death of the Author es la más redonda que me he encontrado hasta ahora entre ella, sobre todo por esos momentos meta en los que la protagonista es la autora de una novela de la que también podemos leer fragmentos en Death of the Author. Y, afortunadamente, la escritora de origen nigeriano consigue que estos saltos no sea nada confusos y aporten más sustancia a una novela ya de por sí inmersiva.


La protagonista de la historia es Zelu, una parapléjica autora de origen nigeriano a la que despiden de su trabajo y publica una novela de ciencia ficción que se convierte en un tremendo éxito de ventas a nivel internacional. Zelu tiene una personalidad poliédrica, con tantas facetas que es difícil llegar a conocerla. Por una parte, el accidente que la privó del uso de sus piernas hizo que su familia la protegiera mucho más, pero también se siente oprimida de vez en cuando por ese mismo amor. Por otra parte, la fama sin precedentes que le llega como una bomba inesperada cambiará su forma de relacionarse con el mundo.

En Death of the Author se pueden ver varias de las obsesiones e inquietudes de las que Nnedi hace gala a lo largo de toda su producción. La importancia de las raíces de una cultura a pesar de pertenecer a otra, cómo la discapacidad influye a todos los niveles en la vida de las personas, la importancia suprema de la familia y las relaciones interpersonales entre sus miembros… Todo esto y más se ve claramente reflejado en la obra, que abraza sin ambages la ciencia ficción tanto de futuro cercano con invenciones como exoesqueletos que permiten la movilidad a personas parapléjicas como la especulación más desaforada con un mundo post-humanidad dominado por los robots, sin dejar de lado la terapia genética. Pero todo esto sin olvidar por ejemplo los secuestros exprés, la importancia absoluta de las redes sociales y la reputación en el mundo actual o incluso las costumbres más ancestrales sobre los ritos funerarios. Una mezcla de tradición y absoluta vanguardia que te obliga a seguir leyendo para ver por dónde avanzará la trama.

Este es un libro que versa también sobre la creación literaria. Se puede escribir sin pensar en el público objetivo, pero una vez que un libro cae en otras manos ajenas a las que lo escribieron, entra en juego la interpretación de cada lector, que necesariamente no podrá ser la misma que la del autor. ¿Cómo influye esto en la vida de la novela? ¿Y en la del escritor? Son cuestiones muy profundas que Okorafor plantea, pero no necesariamente resuelve, dejando a la interpretación del lector el juicio final.

Una muestra extraordinaria del Africanfuturism definido por la propia autora.

After losing her job and facing rejection, Zelu wirtes a bold science fiction novel about androids and AI. As her life and story interwine, reality and fiction begin to blur, leading to unexpected changes and a journey of love, loss and fame.


I was really excited to get the arc for this novel but unfortunately I didnt enjoy it as much as I wanted.

Let me start with the good parts. Zelu is a Black, disabled protagonist, and I really valued the representation. It was insightful to explore her struggles and how she adapts to the world around her, while also celebrating Nigerian food and culture.

My main problem was that I didn't connect witht the main character and the pacing of the book was too slow. I also wish we got more of the "rusted robots" chapters, I really enjoy those parts.

Overall, there were some standout moments and I'm sure it would work for other people, but this wasn't for me.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This one is less a scifi but a book that has a lot to say about what makes a scifi, both from readership and authorship perspective, but above all - this is a book inna book kind of a book. I somehow missed that from the blurbs, can you believe it? If I had seem this coming I would have been more prepared to spend so much time hopping between Zelu's life and Zelu's book. As it happens, I am not a fan of this trope, like, at all... In theory it's all fine and well, but I haven't read a novel that executes this to my liking in anything I read in the last ten years or so.

Having said that, it was an interesting read culturally and on a meta-level. I wasn't a fan of reading along for all the horrible things happening to the in-universe author, but enjoyed insights into her life that were underpinned by her background and life situation. For that alone, I am upping the score and rounding up 3.5 to a 4.

Interesting concept with the dual narratives and the potential near future sci-fi themes and social commentary are timely. Zelu and her family were compelling characters and I did enjoy the plot overall, just need to sit a bit on it, as weirdly not sure I liked the ending of either plotline. 3-4 stars

⭐⭐⭐ 3.5 / 5
This was a good book but if I'm being honest I was left feeling a little unsatisfied.

📖 Zelu life is upended when she is fired from her university job and her latest novel is rejected. Disabled, unemployed and from a nosy, high-achieving, judgmental family, she’s not sure what comes next.

She decides to write a book unlike her others; a sci fi about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. And everything changes.

✨ Review ✨
This is a science fiction drama that arguably sits strongly in the literacy fiction genre. The science mainly sits in the book she has written which we get passages from throughout. Having said that the sci-fi elements do become more prominent as the book goes on.

There is so much the love about this and it has the makings to be something I should love but overall it just didn't hit for me. Starting with what I did love though and that's the concept, I think it's really interesting and it has something to say.

I also really enjoyed Zelu as a character and the disability representation was fantastic. Learning about her challenges and how she navigates the world and to see her be such a strong willed and unapologetically herself was the best thing about this book.

This is also a beautiful celebration of Nigerian culture and again I loved it for that.

The thing that didn't work for me is I think this book was doing to much. It goes into ableism, racism, cancel culture, patriarchy, dysfunctional family dynamics, death, grief, the use of AI, the publishing industry, motherhood, love and relationships, nationalism, social media culture, feminism, transphoba etc...

This book tries to tackle so many important issues that I found a lot of it lacking depth and in turn it didn't have the emotional impact a book like this should have. Everything it was saying was interesting but I kept wanting more from all these different threads and I was left feeling unsatisfied.

I still think this is a great book and I would highly recommend it, it was just missing something for me.

Nigerian speculative fiction author Nnedi Okorafor goes for something a little meta in her latest novel Death of the Author. On the outside the novel follows a woman who finds the double edged sword of fame through the publication of her first novel. But inside the book are excerpts from that novel and hints at the life experiences of the author that informed its plot and characters.
Zelu is at a low ebb when Death of the Author opens. A teacher of creative writing but with no publication to her name, Zelu finds herself losing her job and on the outer. But this setback (and some very powerful marijuana) puts her on course to write her magnum opus – a science fiction novel called Rusted Robots. Once published the book absolutely blows up and Zelu finds herself in the media spotlight. None of this impresses her Nigerian family who are never afraid to bring her down a peg.
Death of the Author is a brave mix of family drama, thinly veiled science fiction and the sort of skewering of the publishing industry that we have seen recently in books like RF Kuang’s Yellowface and Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot. Not all of these elements work as well as the others. In particular, the novel within a novel is fairly hackneyed and, other than its Nigerian setting, does nothing more than many other robopocalypse novels. It is hard to understand how this novel (which to be fair readers only get sections of) could ever spur the kind of global and cross-cultural adoration that Okorafor imagines. And in many ways this book as a whole would have been better if readers were just asked to imagine the novel within a novel.
There is plenty of thematic interest in Death of the Author. From an exploration of Zelu’s relationship with her family, to the broader cultural issues that sit behind that. But also an exploration of Zelu’s disability – Zelu has been in a wheelkchair since she was 12 - which due to her fame she gets to do something about. That something is a pair of robotic legs (even the framing story is a little sci-fi) which deepens Zelu’s connection with her fictional world.
I really wanted to like Death of the Author more but I found the whole to be less than the sum of its parts. While this may be a unique way of bringing those parts together, many of them have been done better elsewhere.

A fresh blend of sci-fi and litfic that majorly explores the theme of how writing is coloring by author experiences and how their books change them as well. I enjoyed the quick commentary on reading/publishing discourse and the unusual structure with intermittent interviews of the authors family made for an engaging read. A great ending but the middle lagged. An interesting book whose bulk will put some readers off.

After Zelu gets fired from her job and spending years trying to publish a novel, she gets struck by inspiration and writes a sci-fi novel, Rusted Robots, that launches her into stardom, with all its ups and downs.

Death of the Author is a wonderful genre-blending novel weaving three narratives : one following Zelu, another telling the story of Ankara (the robot protagonist of Rusted Robots) and finally interviews from Zelu’s close ones. If I had to think of one flaw in this book, it’s that the transitions between narratives isn’t always the smoothest, especially when spending a while with Zelu and then switching to her novel. But everything else was just incredible.

I loved Zelu as our protagonist, she was so fleshed out and complex, she felt like she could actually exist. I loved seeing her navigate her disability, her culture as a Nigerian American, her sudden rise to fame and her complicated relationship with her family. That last one was especially, I felt exasperated by them alongside her, but also sometimes comforted by their presence.

The worldbuilding was also great, whether the near-future technologies of Zelu’s narrative, or the post-apocalyptic Nigeria inhabited only by robots. Seeing the different tribes of robots and the conflicts brewing and exploding between them, but all the while seeing a developing friendship between opposing sides through Ankara and Ijele. And all that had to be said about storytelling !
Let’s not forget that ending ! I haven’t really parsed out my feelings about it, but it certainly changed my perspective around the entire novel and makes me really want to reread this book in the future taking that into account.

Now I just need to get to Okorafor’s other books, because I’ve definitely been missing out !

Thank you to NetGalley and Gollancz for the ARC copy.

The blurb made this sound an unusual and exciting story. The endorsement from George R R Martin, sold it to me. I was really hoping to find something new with this book, but, unfortunately it never grabbed me. The Sci-fi story-within-a-story wasn't particularly interesting. I liked Zelu, the main character, but couldn't relate to the rest of the family who were just a jumble of names.
The story of Zelu showed promise but the writing was clunky and seemed to be all over the place. I lost interest part way through.
This writer seems to have a lot of admirers for her work but this just wasn't for me.

Death of the Author is a novel in two parts. For the majority of the book, we follow Zelu, a Nigerian-American paraplegic author navigating her way through a series of chaotic life events. Interspersed throughout Zelu’s story are chapters from Ankara’s perspective in Rusted Robot, a post-human extinction novel where androids and AI have full autonomy.

This was my first Nnedi Okorafor novel, and I’m so excited to read more of her work. I often struggle with books that switch between two different stories, but my goodness, Okorafor truly pulled it off here. The back-and-forth structure of the novel perfectly enhanced the suspense, creating a sense of building toward an unknown but significant culmination.

I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Zelu, Ankara, and the rest of the cast of characters, both human and robot. Whilst the overarching story arc and the unique path to the ending were engaging, I found the pacing in the final quarter of the book slightly uneven, leaving me with a hint of dissatisfaction. However, I really appreciated having a fellow reader to discuss the events leading up to the conclusion. This book makes for a perfect buddy read or book club pick!

The novel’s greatest strength lies in the range and depth of the themes it explores. Through following Zelu and Ankara, we are invited to reflect on identity and ‘humanity’, particularly through the lens of Zelu’s disability and her newfound public recognition. The chapters from Rusted Robot and Zelu’s commentary on her writing process prompt thinking about the power and risks of AI in a rapidly evolving world. Additionally, the portrayal of Zelu’s family relationships encourages us as readers to consider family dynamics and individual identity within those connections.

Death of the Author offers a beautiful illustration of, and commentary on, the power of art, technology, and the human condition in an increasingly scary and uncertain world. I’m excited for more people to read it!

Thanks to NetGalley and Gollancz for the e-ARC. All opinions are my own.

TWs/CWs:
Graphic: Ableism, Medical content, and Death of parent
Moderate: Death, Gore, and Suicide attempt
Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Blood

This was an interesting one, and in the best possible way. It's more about science fiction than it is science fiction in its own right, though it does contain substantial 'extracts' from Zelu's novel, which it switches to throughout. The book switches between interviews with Zelu's family, narration of her life and chapters of her book, Rusting Robots. They all give the sense of leading up to something, especially the interviews, leaving the reader to try to speculate what. I guessed entirely wrongly, and was pleasantly surprised to see what actually happened instead.

I loved Zelu as a character. She was stubborn to a fault, and I found it particularly interesting how the book explored how she responded to her status as a best-selling writer enabling her to open doors that she had previously believed closed for good. It was also fascinating to see how she handled the possibility and reality that some things would seemingly never be available to her, no matter how much technology advanced. A lot of the book was about Zelu and her autonomy - how she accessed it, how she lost it, and how she fought for it - which was so well laid out in the story that decisions I would never make myself made perfect sense within the story. Altogether, the way her character developed and changed, and how others changed around her, cemented this book as one with perhaps some of the best-written characters I've read in a while.

The science fiction aspect that did exist in the 'real world' part felt very grounded, as if it could very well be the reality of next year, or perhaps ten years down the line. It profoundly shaped the narrative, but also fit so well into it that it just made sense, with hardly the need to suspend one's disbelief. The book imagined the best of technology and, where modern innovation couldn't quite make the leap, it only seemed natural to imagine that technology had advanced a little further than previously thought. I really liked how technology was treated in the book, I think a lot of science fiction in modern-ish settings focus on the consequences of making sci-fi concepts a reality - this book explored the potential.

Overall, I am lacking the words to express anything much more profound than that I really, really liked this book. I don't have any good points of comparison for it, I can't tell you that if you liked a particular book or a particular subgenre then this will be your thing: Death of the Author is, I think, an entirely unique novel for which no comparison can do justice. If it sounds interesting to you, though, do check it out, it is well worth the read.

3.75 ⭐️

This book definitely felt like a mixture of literary fiction and sci-fi and I must admit I had a good time with this book. I managed to finish it very quickly (couldn’t sleep so read instead).
I enjoyed the writing in this. It was very well written.