About this item
Read Nnedi Okorafor's posts on the Penguin Blog. An award-winning literary author presents her first foray into supernatural fantasy with a novel of post- apocalyptic Africa. In a far future, post-nuclear-holocaust Africa, genocide plagues one region. The aggressors, the Nuru, have decided to follow the Great Book and exterminate the Okeke. But when the only surviving member of a slain Okeke village is brutally raped, she manages to escape, wandering farther into the desert. She gives birth to a baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand and instinctively knows that her daughter is different. She names her daughter Onyesonwu, which means "Who Fears Death?" in an ancient African tongue. Reared under the tutelage of a mysterious and traditional shaman, Onyesonwu discovers her magical destiny-to end the genocide of her people. The journey to fulfill her destiny will force her to grapple with nature, tradition, history, true love, the spiritual mysteries of her culture-and eventually death itself.
About the Author
Nnedi Okorafor's books include Lagoon (a British Science Fiction Association Award finalist for Best Novel) , Who Fears Death (a World Fantasy Award winner for Best Novel) , Kabu Kabu (a Publisher's Weekly Best Book for Fall 2013) , Akata Witch (an Amazon.com Best Book of the Year) , Zahrah the Windseeker (winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature) , and The Shadow Speaker (a CBS Parallax Award winner) . Her adult novel The Book of Phoenix (prequel to Who Fears Death) was released in May 2015; the New York Times called it a "triumph". Her novella Binti will be released in late September 2015 and her young adult novel Akata Witch 2: Breaking Kola will be released in 2016. Nnedi holds a PhD in literature/creative writing and is an associate professor at the University at Buffalo, New York (SUNY) . She splits her time between Buffalo and Chicago with her daughter Anyaugo and family. Learn more about Nnedi at Nnedi.com.
