DEATH OF THE AUTHOR . By Nnedi Okorafor. William Morrow.
448 pages. $30. Nnedi Okorafor’s latest novel is a metafictional two-for-one treat, combining this prolific author’s trademark Africanfuturism with a riveting contemporary family drama.
Although Okorafor is U.S.-born and now lives in Phoenix, her work always has insisted on its Africanness, and both parts of "Death of the Author" are vigorously Nigeria-centric.
This wonderfully conceived and complicated novel opens with one of a series of interviews with the family members of Zelu, the second oldest of a large Nigerian-American family who we learn has written a best-selling science fiction novel called “Rusted Robots.” Despite Zelu’s enormous, life-altering success, Chinyere, the older sister, and the rest of the overachieving family, have a hard time seeing beyond the irresponsible wild child whose youthful recklessness had resulted in her being confined to a wheelchair. Throughout this novel, however, Zelu refuses to be confined to or by anything.
It is her refusal to abide by convention that leads to “Rusted Robots” in the first place. While attending her younger sister Amarachi’s glamorous, thoroughly afropolitan wedding in Trinidad, Zelu learns that a student complaint against her has got her fired from her adjunct teaching job back in Chicago. She had told an entitled creative writing student exactly what she thought of his whiny, pretentious prose, and the student had reported her to the chair of .
