I feel like I’ve read quite a few books lately where I was very interested in the novel throughout, but was disappointed by the ending. Fortunately, I did not have that issue with Death of the Author. The last chapter was perfection.

Death of the Author follows Zelu, a Nigerian-American paraplegic adjunct professor who goes through a series of unfortunate events. When she hits a low point, she goes on a tear to write a novel that ends up becoming a huge sci-fi bestseller. Death of the Author explores Zelu’s time growing up, how she became a paraplegic, her family dynamics, how success changes her life (and how it doesn’t), and her overall sense of self.

The book goes back and forth between her own perspective, chapters of her best-selling book, and snippets of interviews with her family members. It sounds a bit disjointed, but it works. There’s perspectives given on ableism, racism, grief and the role that the public plays in someone’s art. There were some weaker aspects of the book, but overall, I enjoyed it. Plus, the hardcover copy is beautiful!

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Initially, judging from the cover, I was expecting a some sort of magical tale older than time, but this is not really that book, or maybe it is, just not in a sense of a fairy tale or legend
The plot - without too many spoilers: Zelu, our main character is a disabled Nigerian-American writer who after a series of hard knocks, writes a novel that become wildly successful. This success, of course drastically changes her relationships and threatens to change her life forever. This is told basically as a story within a story and it is an amazing look at the publishing process, family life, and Chicago. Some have wondered if this work is a bit auto-biographical, but I'd argue that most novels of this sort are a bit auto-biographical and it probably isn't good to attach that label to a work by an author, unless the author herself attached the label.

So... does all of this change lead to a forever life change? A rendering with family and friends? Well... you'll need to read to find out. Along the way you'll be thinking about AI, robots, Nollywood, and a host of things that will likely tickle your brain in that spot that just wants new, new, new ideas!
This is another solid work from Nnedi Okorafor.

Thank you to Netgalley for the eARC, all opinions are my own.

This was a 4.5 star read for me, almost 4.75 stars, so rounding up to 5. This is so different from Okorafor's other works. Though it is science fiction, it reads like lit fic. I will always read what Nnedi Okorafor has to offer, but this one surprised me, in a good way.

Zelu's storyline was incredibly immersive, and I just wanted to know more about her siblings, her family... and I DEFINITELY wanted to taste some of that food they were eating. I had a multi-day consistent craving for jollof rice and plantains while reading. The story was nonlinear, but not in a bad way, jumping between perspectives as well as telling a story within a story. However, instead of feeling disjointed, it felt like you were putting a puzzle together piece by piece while looking at it from different sides.

Family came through so strongly in this book, as well as the importance of humanity. I'm going to go look for interviews with the author to see how she talks about it.

The ending though... I didn't see it coming, I didn't love it, but I also didn't hate it? Four days later, I'm still sort of torn. I may reread to see if I missed ways in which it was foreshadowed.

Delightful read.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!
Nnedi Okorafor always does a fantastic job in writing a interesting and unique concept and world. I thought the use of drama about art worked with what I’ve come to expect from the author. The characters in this worked well and were beautifully done with the story, I thought the use of metafiction worked overall and glad it continued to had that element that I was expecting. I’m glad I got to read this and left me wanting more from Nnedi Okorafor.

So much has been written about this book, and so much can still be said about the plots, but so much has been given away in so many reviews.

Here I want to focus on the masterful storytelling Okorafor has accomplished in The Death of the Author, and the themes she weaves throughout the book. Her characters all have distinctive voices, which stands out from so many other books; the African dialect in voices is accomplished through rhythm and tone of the language (almost all in English, with a few words spread throughout), a technique I wished more authors would use instead of patois/broken English spellings, which break the reader out of the narrative and dialogue. All of her characters in every country and situation have such distinct voices that it’s a pleasure to read, and her characters are far more well-rounded than the average because of this.

She also weaves two stories throughout the book, distinctively different (the Humes/robots and AIs of the far future, in Africa, and the 21st-century humans in the US and Africa) and yet thematically the same — a theme of what it is to be human, what it is to be “real,” what it is to be accepted by others and by the community and the world. A theme Zelu struggles with in regards to her family’s complicated negative attitude towards her disability (paraplegic) and her use of a wheelchair, and later her use of advanced technology in order to walk. And a theme involved deeply in the story of the Hume and an AI, struggling to save the world and yet caught up in another struggle to determine their own identities within their societies.

Finally, it is a story of anabasis and katabasis — both protagonists go through their own descent and ascent, culminating in evolution into new beings. The story that’s at the heart of all narratives of self-discovery. Okorafor does this masterfully.

This is perhaps the best book I’ve read in decades; I devoured it in two days, and I’ve been reading slowly lately. I found myself unable to sleep at one point, anxious to find out what happened next, and got up at 3am to read more. I can’t recommend this book more highly and more enthusiastically. It’s accessible to all readers, both of science fiction and “mainstream” fiction — and I’ve sold this book by hand to both types of customers with positive feedback from all. I suspect the field will not allow this to be her “breakout” book into mainstream fiction, but it should be. It also deserves awards and accolades. If you read nothing else this year, read this book.

"Death of the Author" is a tour de force of storytelling! A science fiction novel within a literary novel. Never has two for the proce if one delivered a more thought-provoking opportunity for the reader!

Nnedi Okorafor is an author who has written many books in her career but says that this novel has been in her mind and heart for almost thirty years. And what an epic homage to the intertwining importance there is to be found in the connections between the storyteller and the reader, and how that connection most definitely provides opportunities for reflection and consideration of life's bigger issues.

The fictional part of Okorafor's story is loud and quiet, bright and dim, clear and muddled, sweet and sour in turns. It is also messy and real and myth-filled and culture rich and perfect and flawed... well, you know, human.

The sci-fi within that fictional framework is an AI and robot-filled tale of order and chaos and of understanding. Yet within what one might expect to be a *perfect* world, always the quest for more answers. Ultimately, as these robotic characters search for contextual meaning in their world, they come to a rather startling and human conclusion! To say more would be to spoil this discovery of known truths for the next reader, so here my review will end.

I'd like to thank the author for her insight and craft, the publisher for recognizing and amplifying that, and to NetGalley for offering me an opportunity to read this speculative, original, and thought-provoking novel.

"Death of the Author" was published recently on January 14, 2025.

Death of the Author is an important book for any creative person. This is a book that teaches you to believe in yourself even when others don't and to work through your fears because you never know when you're going to succeed.

AMAZING is one way that I can describe this book. I had never read ant of this author's works.
; therfore when I began reading, I was openminded, and wanted to enjoy the experience. There was so much to love-- and author with a disability, artificial intelligence, blending with African culture, history, & utopian ideas, I look forward to reading books written by Nnedi Okorafor.

This book was SO close to a 5-star! I loved pretty much everything about it (except the ending). Full disclosure… I am a Nnedi Okorafor FAN; have been for years, so Death of the Author was one of my most anticipated releases. I was not disappointed. Okorafor’s would building is spectacular, as usual. Both major settings were tangible and vibrant. Her characters are as flawed, compelling and well-realized as ever. This was not a story about food, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how beautifully and vividly Okorafor describes the food in this book.

Ultimately, Death of the Author is an exercise in genre blending that is incredibly fresh and subtle. It wasn’t at all what I expected. Integrating Sci-fi into what is at its core contemporary fiction, added so much interest to the narrative. It is undoubtedly science fiction, but it doesn’t “feel” like it; which works so well for this particular work.

The way the story is written added even more interest. A story nestled into another story is not a unique concept, but it was executed beautifully. It comes full circle with an added layer at the end.

I didn’t LOVE the ending, however I do believe that it will spark an abundance of lively conversations. In that way, I can concede that Okorafor left us with an intriguing ending.

**NOTE** this review is intentionally vague, as I think this is the kind of story where knowing as little as possible can only enhance the reading experience.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.75

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for this advance copy of Death of the Author. All opinions are my own.

Wow. It’s hard to describe this novel without spoiling the entire conceit, but this is metafiction at its finest. A book within a book, but so much more complex than that.

On the surface, this is a classic hero’s journey (look up Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey if you’re unfamiliar- it’s a great framework for a lot of literary analysis). Campbell’s theory is referenced directly in the text and the narrative follows the classic elements of a hero’s journey with our protagonist Zelu, a disabled Nigerian-American woman with an insatiable desire to escape the confines of what others believe she should accept as her lot in life. At a low point in her life, Zelu writes and publishes a bestselling science fiction novel that launches its author into a life she never could have expected for herself. Her newfound fame is controversial within her traditional Nigerian family but Zelu only continues to stretch the bounds of what is acceptable, reasonable, safe, or even physically possible for a human to achieve as the novel hurtles on toward one of the most satisfying endings I’ve ever read.

Zelu is seeking her “ultimate boon”, a concept from The Hero’s Journey which refers to the climax of the journey in which the hero achieves their destiny and receives their reward for completing their quest. Zelu’s quest is to finally be free from the physical and social limitations that have defined her life since her accident at the age of 12, and she achieves her ultimate boon in the novel’s final pages, but there is so much more to it than a classic hero’s journey like we’ve seen famously represented by such heroes as Luke Skywalker or Indiana Jones.

There is a sense of foreboding throughout the book due to its title (we must assume the author will die, right?) and the interviews from Zelu’s loved ones who lament the unnamed thing that happens to her after her meteoric rise to fame and the dangerous choices she makes with her newly acquired celebrity and money. The pervasive anxiety in Zelu’s narrative as well as in the other story seen in alternating chapters, presumed to be excerpts from Zelu’s novel, made this a relatively fast paced read. I had to force myself to slow down and savor it so I wouldn’t miss any important details, especially as everything was wrapped up in the book’s final pages.

If you are ambivalent towards or downright terrified of the rise of AI like I am, this book might seem like a bit much but I urge you to give it a try because above all it’s a book about humanity and the power of storytelling. 5 stars.

When I started reading this book, I was worried about the main character, Zelu, and whatever she was about to get herself into; by the end, I loved every character in this book. I had an amazing time reading this book and lived each character's journey to growth and understanding. This was beautifully written, and the suspense had me on the edge of my seat.

I was so excited to get my hands on this novel—I’ve been a fan of Nnedi Okorafor since I picked up "Who Fears Death" nearly a decade ago. Her vision of the future and retelling of the past is a masterclass in storytelling—especially if you’re into experimental format.

Here’s what really worked for me in this novel:

* The format: Okorafor tells this story from several levels. There’s the main perspective, from our extremely well-developed main character Zelu. She’s telling the story in a linear timeline, moving through the events that lead her through the course of the novel. We’ve also got excerpts of the novel she’s writing in the story—which map loosely to the world Okorafor is building. And we have interviews throughout with Zelu’s family.

* The family dynamics: In addition to Zelu being a memorable, fully realized character, her relationship to her wider family pulled me in. The push/pull of support and sheltering was resonant and honest, and while some readers might struggle with Zelu’s emotional positioning toward them, I’ve rarely met a character on page allowed to explore their anger and hurt alongside the love.

What worked less well for me:

* The actual novel inside the novel, “Rusted Robots,” lost me toward the end. I wanted to be as at home with those characters as I was with Zelu.

* The billionaire character was hard to read as anyone but the real-world person he's clearly based on. In this moment, that was hard to reconcile and pulled me out of the world she was building every time he was on the page.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Folks looking to get a taste of what she can do on the page should check out her novella Binti, but I truly hope folks pick this one up.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC, in exchange for an honest review.

Death of the Author is my first 5 star read of 2025, and I absolutely love it! Nnedi Okorafor is truly one of the most remarkable writers, and I enjoy everything she writes. I appreciate how she weaves a story within a story, which adds a whole new dimension to the narrative. Both stories merge together in the end to form an incredible narrative. Nnedi Okorafor’s unique worldbuilding is impressive, and her take on humanity and robots is a delight to read. I highly recommend this book to every reader. Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was my first read by this author, and I received it as an ARC from NetGalley. What an absolutely incredible book! It had its low points and weak portions, but in its entirety, it's a perfect science fiction novel. This book refuses to be put into a box, quite like its protagonist, Zelu, a paraplegic literary writing professor who is fired from her job and ends up writing a runaway science fiction novel, which is interspersed as part of this novel. Most of this novel is about the journey that the characters undertake, both to a destination and through their fears. A book-within-a-book. To be more specific, a sci-fi book within a litfic book. This made it so difficult to judge objectively, which is what makes it fantastic. The style of book-within-a-book is difficult to execute, simply because we're told so much about how good a book is within a book, and that ends up meddling with our own judgment. Most of all, it takes talent to write two genres of books with different styles of writing and different internal voices for characters, something many authors cannot accomplish well. The sci-fi book has incredible worldbuilding but suffers from slightly simplistic prose. Then again, popular books tend to have simplistic prose to appeal to a broad demographic, which actually adds believability to the novel. The litfic book has great characterizations, albeit a convenient plot at times, but this is a sci-fi book overall, which requires a little suspension of disbelief. All this happens in the backdrop of Nigerian culture and mythology, which permeates through both books. Nnedi Okorafor writes Africanfuturism, and the genre is cultivated at its finest in this book. She took on a mammoth task with this style and delivered perfection. At its core, this book is about creation (and creators), individualism, conformism, and our innate human instinct to assign meaning to everything. Where should the meaning of the text come from? The author’s intentions or the readers' myriad interpretations? Who gets to tell the stories of whom? Who gets to tell stories? Where do stories go when the author dies? I didn't love Zelu's character, but found her so compelling and believable—she is amazingly well-written. She is a magnificent, adventurous, endearing character even while being realistic and annoying. It takes talent to write a character who could realistically write another character. Zelu's family and friends are so realistic—I can tell having grown up in a collectivist culture. Some brilliant characters within the sci-fi novel too—I mean, sometimes characterization suffers for worldbuilding, but everything works well here.

I truly can say I've never read anything like this in my life. The prose was fantastic and the way she shifted in timelines was so smooth and yet I never got lost. Absolutely STUNNING, swear it is a new classic.

Sometimes you have to be at rock bottom before you can do something truely extraordinary. And rock bottom is where we meet Zelu at the beginning of Death of the Author, a story about resilience, reinvention and an exploration the relationship between creativity and humanity.

Part literary sci-fi and part contemporary character study, Death of the Author takes our present fears about technology and AI and transforms them into something profoundly beautiful. Okorafor presents two simultaneous narratives: we follow Zelu’s life as a disabled writer grappling with rejection, family pressures, and her own insecurities at the same time as we read the hit sci-fi novel that she wrote when she was at her most broken and desperate. The novel is a post-human, post-apocalyptic tale of robots and AI repeating both the worst mistakes and greatest triumphs of humanity. We did create them in our image, after all.

For those who have read and loved Okorafor's previous works, like Binti, it's worth noting that this book is very different in tone and style. While the voice is still distinctly Okorafor's, this story is more literary and abstract, lingering on the details of Zelu's life for reasons that don't become clear until the end. I suspect many readers will wish they could just read Zelu's book and not have to get to know her so well. And many readers won't love Zelu - she's not an easy character.

But if you can enjoy the juxtoposition of Zelu's life and her struggles with the story of her robots and their own struggles, then the payoff is truly worth it. There are a handful of books I've read where when I read the last words, I suddenly feel like crying. Not because the story itself made me emotional, but because it's over and I have to leave it behind. This is one of them. I got so invested with Zelu and her robots and AI characters that the end of their story left me surprisingly sad, even though it was a lovely and strangely uplifting ending.

I went into this book with the knowledge that there was a lot of hype around it, and because of that, I think it fell a bit flat. I'm not a consistent science fiction reader, but I found this easy to get into. However, the pacing felt a bit off. Within the first 15%, the main character wrote her novel, so the pacing felt quick, but then the rest was more character-driven vs plot, which I wasn't expecting. Overall, I gave this novel three stars, and it just fell in the middle of the road for me regarding enjoyment.

3.5

I am forever amazed by Nnedi Okorafor's imagination and ability to cross genres. Death of the Author is at its core, a literary novel about the Nigerian American experience. Zelu, the main character, is American and while both of her parents are Nigerian immigrants, one is Igbo and the other is Yoruba. Zelu is also paraplegic, becoming paralyzed after an incident when she was 12, and she is an author struggling to get her book published. In a lot of ways, I think Okorafor's ability to create depth in Zelu was due to her own experiences as a disabled Nigerian American author.

The inciting incident of the story is Zelu getting fired from her teaching position. Post-firing, she writes a science fiction novel that goes viral and Okorafor includes chapters of her famous story throughout the book, which is fascinating because the novel parallels Zelu's story in a really interesting way. I also think that the inclusion of Zelu's novel is what makes this book so genre-defying and it highlights the power of the nature of storytelling and some of the terrors of fame and of the modern publishing.

From a pure craft perspective, I think this book is an easy 4.5 stars, but from a personal enjoyment perspective it was closer to a 3 star experience. That being said, I haven't been able to stop thinking about this book so maybe upon reread it'll become a full 4 star or higher experience.

This book has been talked about so much and hyped up that I was eager to read it.
I’ll admit based on the peculiar summary of this book I was expecting it to be a mixture of literary fiction and sci-fi but it was leaning more towards drama. At times it does get confusing keeping up with the book within a book so I can see how many readers might struggle with that aspect or lose interest with it. I think since it’s on the lengthy side of over 400 pages more editing needs to be done overall. What I absolutely appreciated was the main character of Zelu, a Nigerian American paraplegic author battling with her disability, cultural identity and ambitious goals. I admire the author for being so creative with this book and I understand what all the hype surrounding this was about. As stated before I did feel this was a tad too long and drawn out which might bore some readers or make them lose interest which would be an utter shame as those who stop reading would be missing out on something unique and extraordinary.
This was such an unusual book that tackled so many subject matters that is destined to be discussed in group settings. Not all readers will understand the message and themes this book takes on but I know anyone who ends up finishing this will be thinking about this book for a very long time.
Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing me this ARC copy in exchange for my honest feedback and review.