I liked the vividly described setting and culture, the heroine's interactions with her friends, the simple, direct prose and the way the book deals with sexism. The narrator, Onyesonwu, is a child of rape, who faces discrimination based on her gender and her mixed-race status while growing up, but goes on in the second half of the novel to undertake a quest to stop the genocide against her mother's people. Who Fears Death is a post-apocalyptic fantasy novel, set in a future Sudan with many of the problems that plague the region today (genocide, weaponized rape, female genital mutilation, etc.). But between its poor structure, its infuriating outdated tropes, its overpowered heroine and its all-too-easy magical solutions to real-life problems, I'm left wondering why so many people like it.

Learn more about Nnedi at and follow Nnedi on twitter (as Facebook and Instagram. She lives with her daughter Anyaugo in Phoenix, AZ. Her debut novel Zahrah the Windseeker won the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature.

Her many works include Who Fears Death (winner of the World Fantasy Award and in development at HBO as a TV series), the Nebula and Hugo award winning novella trilogy Binti (in development as a TV series), the Lodestar and Locus Award winning Nsibidi Scripts Series, LaGuardia (winner of a Hugo and Eisner awards for Best Graphic Novel) and her most recent novella Remote Control.

Born in the United States to two Nigerian (Igbo) immigrant parents and visiting family in Nigeria since she was a child, the foundation and inspiration of Nnedi’s work is rooted in this part of Africa. The more specific terms for her works are africanfuturism and africanjujuism, both terms she coined and defined. Nnedi Okorafor is a New York Times Bestselling writer of science fiction and fantasy for both children and adults.

Who fears death novel