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Who Fears Death

by Nnedi Okorafor, 2010

Review is copyright © 2019 by Wil C. Fry. All Rights Reserved.

Published: 2019.09.07

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Photo by Wil C. Fry, 2019

★★★★ (of 5)

 

Summary

Listed as Okorafor’s “first adult novel” (she had previously written either short stories or novels marketed to teens/young adults), Who Fears Death won the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and the 2010 Carl Brandon Kindred Award, and was nominated for both a Nebula and a Locus.

It is the story of a young woman, Onyesonwu (which translates as “who fears death” in Igbo), who learns she can control powerful magic. She goes on a quest to confront the sorcerer Daib, who fathered her via rape. Along the way, she gathers a group of friends, some more loyal than others. In one sense, it is a coming-of-age story; it is also an adventure/quest narrative.

 

Commentary

The story is told in the first person, which I enjoy. It moves quickly; there is little-to-no meandering. Aside from the first few chapters going back in time a little, the story is chronological. I easily recognized the writing style from Okorafor’s Binti novellas — and especially early there were plenty of similarities. Who Fears Death has more dialog, and more developed characters than did the Binti stories. The narration is clear and to the point; when the reader is kept guessing, it is only for a few paragraphs/pages (unlike in Binti where I sometimes felt lost and had too many things to guess at).

One weird thing: The blurb says it takes place in “a post-apocalyptic Africa”, and the Wikipedia page says the setting is a “future version of Sudan”, but I spent most of the book not seeing mention of the location. It wasn’t until the last three words of the epilogue — “Kingdom of Sudan” — that the reader has any idea where the story takes place. (Way back on page 239, “English” was listed as a possible language someone might know, which was the only other connection to planet Earth in the entire story.) I don’t think the planet or continent was relevant in any way to the story.

The usual world-building found in both sci-fi and fantasy was absent here — I assume Okorafor had a background history in mind, but it wasn’t necessary for the story so it was okay that she left it out. It was off-stage. The reader is told everything she needs to know in order to understand the story. (In Binti, I thought more world-building would have helped, since the story involved interstellar colonization, spacecraft, and an off-world government, none of which was explained and very little of which was described.)

The story is fun and yet sad, poignant and realistic (except for the magic), gritty yet beautiful. The pacing is steady.

 

Content Warning: Rape Scene And FGM

For readers who need the warning, here it is: this book contains a detailed rape scene early, and an uncomfortable (for me) description of female genital mutilation.

This isn’t the first novel I’ve read with a rape scene, but I think it’s the first one I’ve read written by a woman. And it certainly has the only instance of FGM I’ve ever read in fiction. Both were difficult for me to read. (In the past, I have always skimmed past rape scenes written by men.) In this case, both were central to the plot and the main character’s development.

Interestingly, Okorafor was criticized for including the FGM scene, accused both of “defending female genital cutting” (by westerners) and of getting it wrong (by Africans). [Oddly, that first link looks mostly blank when I go there, but the text is visible if you select it.] I can’t say whether she got it wrong, but I can say definitively that she wasn’t defending the practice. It is clear from the prose that the narrator doesn’t approve of the practice, nor of misogyny in general.

And, according to at least one source, the entire book was inspired by a 2004 article in The Washington Post called “We Want To Make A Light Baby”, about “weaponized rape” by Arab militiamen against Black African women in the Darfur conflict.

 

Points Off For... [SPOILER ALERT]

The ending... I was left feeling unsure at the end. [THIS IS A SPOILER.] See, there were two endings. You know how there are sometimes “alternate ending” tracks on DVD or Bluray movies? Something like that happened here. There was the ending — which I won’t spoil — and it was a decent ending. I was ready to give five stars. Then there was an epilogue, which helpfully put some perspective on the ending. But then... There was a different ending, by a different narrator voice. This was unexplained and confusing. The alternate ending was okay too, I guess, if less clear to me than the original. But the fact that it was a different ending was just... Not as good as having one original ending.

 

Conclusion

The story was powerful. As much as I enjoyed the Binti series, I think this book was better. Though fantasy (magic, wizards, etc.) still isn’t my cup of tea, there is enough regular human stuff in this book to draw in a reader. I was interested in the characters, the setting, and yes even the magic. I like that Onyesonwu was a skeptic — didn’t believe in the god of her people without evidence.

I continue to try to widen the scope of my interests instead of reading the same-old, same-old, and I like Who Fears Death as a part of that. In my opinion, more of us can read more books by people different from us and different from the same types of authors we’ve always read.

 

Addendum, 2019.10.09

The author, Okorafor, tweeted in March 2019 that she does not want the term “afrofuturism” applied to her work. Until seeing that tweet, I had assumed (incorrectly) that she was the one who had coined the term — I’ve seen it in reviews of her books and even on their dust jackets. Now that I know that assumption was incorrect, I will use the term she suggested in the tweet, which is “africanfuturist”. I don’t know what the difference is, but am perfectly happy to use the genre terms specified by authors. I have edited my “genre” bullet point above. Here is a screenshot of her tweet:

 

Note: I’ve published a much shorter version of this review on Goodreads.

 





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