Science Fiction spotlight
Death of the Author
by Nnedi Okorafor
A disabled Nigerian American novelist writes a robot epic that becomes the biggest book on Earth - and then the book starts writing her.
Buy the book
Zelu is a wheelchair user, a fired adjunct professor and the disappointment of a large Nigerian family. Then she writes a novel about androids after the extinction of humanity, and everything about her life changes.
Publisher's blurb
Synopsis
Okorafor braids two books together: Zelu's very worldly story of sudden literary fame, family pressure and an experimental exoskeleton, and 'Rusted Robots', the far-future android novel she writes. The two narratives comment on each other with increasing force, asking what an author owes the story that made her and what a story owes the world it enters.
The editorial feature
A metafiction that never turns cold. The novel-within-a-novel is genuinely gripping on its own terms, while Zelu's chapters give the book its heat - the airport-lounge indignities, the family group chat, the ache of being celebrated and misread at once.
Book details
- Genre
- Science Fiction
- Released
- 14 January 2025
- Publisher
- William Morrow
- Extent
- 448 pages
- Featured on
- 14 January 2025
Where to buy
Death of the Author is available from these retailers.
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