I have a lot of thoughts about this book because I found it both enchanting and frustrating. Let’s start with the plot: We’re somewhere in Africa. The Nuru, a lighter skinned people, and the Okeke, a darker skinned people, are enemies. The Nuru are on course to exterminate the Okeke, following (what they think is) the guidance written in The Great Book. One Okeke woman is raped by a really terrible Nuru during a raping/pillaging raid. She escapes, giving birth in the desert to a baby girl whom she […]
A searing vision of post-apocalypse Africa in sci-fi
I’m currently planning a contemporary global literature course (for a variety of reasons), and I’ve been trying to extend my specialty in contemporary fiction to texts and foci outside my little niche. So when my friend M raved about Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death on Goodreads, I was intrigued. Okorafor herself had read an article from The Washington Post about rape as ethnic cleansing in the Sudan and was inspired to write about the child of one such violent conception. A young Okeke woman is […]