 Zahrah the Windseeker — (2005) Young adult. Publisher: In the Ooni Kingdom, children born dada with vines growing in their hair are rumored to have special powers. Zahrah Tsami doesn't know anything about that. She feels normal. Others think she's different. They fear her. Only Dari, her best friend, isn't afraid of her. But then something begins to happen — something that definitely marks Zahrah as different — and the only person she can tell is Dari. He pushes her to investigate, edging them both closer and closer to danger. Until Dari's life is on the line. Only Zahrah can save him, but to do so she'll have to face her worst fears alone, including the very thing that makes her different.
 The Shadow Speaker — (2007) Young adult. Publisher: Driven by vengeance. Destined for peace.
Niger, West Africa, 2070:
After fifteen-year old Ejii witnesses her father's beheading, her world shatters. In an era of mind-blowing technology and seductive magic, Ejii embarks on a mystical journey to track down her father's killer. With a newfound friend by her side, Ejii comes face to face with an earth turned inside out — and with her own magical powers.
But Ejii soon discovers that her travels across the sands of the Sahara have a greater purpose. Her people need to be protected from a force seeking to annihilate them. And Ejii may be just the hero to do it.
Who Fears Death — (2010) Publisher: 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.
 Who Fears Death
To be something abnormal meant that you were to serve the normal. And if you refused, they hated you... and often the normal hated you even when you did serve them.
In Nnedi Okorafor’s post-apocalyptic Sudan, there are two predominant ethnic factions: the light-skinned Nuru and the dark-skinned Okeke. Who Fears Death takes place amid a genocide that the Nuru commit against the Okeke, a campaign that (like genocides in our own time) includes both murder and rape. The mixed-race offspring of a Nuru and an Okeke is called an Ewu and treated as an outcast.
Onyesonwu, whose name means “Who fears death?”, is Ewu, the result of her mother’s rape. As a child she develops magical powers, which further set her apart from others. In her girlhood she clashes with the local sorcerer, who doesn’t want to teach her because she is Ewu and a girl. Later, as a young woman, she gathers a small group of friends and travels eastward to confront her biological father, who is himself a powerful sorcerer and the mastermind behind the genocide.
Who Fears Death can be incredibly hard to read, due to the subject matter. Okorafor depicts racial and sexual violence without flinching, and because the scenario echoes real events taking place in our own time, it hits hard. It hurts more than reading about imaginary violence in a made-up land.
Okorafor doesn’t pretty up the violence, nor does she glorify it. Scenes of violence are written in a matter-of-fact way. The writing style becomes more lyrical when describing the beautiful. One is left with the impression that Okorafor is glorifying exactly the right parts of the story. Love, kindness, magic: these things are worth celebrating. Violence just is, in Onyesonwu’s world and our own.
The setting may sound like one of today’s (or tomorrow’s) news headlines. Onyesonwu’s plot arc, though, will be familiar in other ways. Okorafor shows that a hero(ine)’s journey can fit into this bleak setting just as well as it can fit into a fairy-tale kingdom, weaving several classic fantasy tropes (such as magical training and the complex bond between mentor and student, and the ragtag band of friends who venture forth to battle evil) into the story. Onyesonwu calls to mind a really big archetype, too, one of the most famous ones: the savior-figure who brings hope to an oppressed people.
Yet she is no plaster saint. Onyesonwu is stubborn and has a temper. She feels lust and love and jealousy. She even has neuroses; she doesn’t like different foods touching on her plate. Her lover Mwita is equally fleshed-out. Her friends are drawn in broader strokes, but you’ll come to love them too, and it hurts that not all of them make it. The rest of the cast members are just as memorable. I think my favorites are Najeeba (Onyesonwu’s mother) and Luyu (one of the band of friends).
Who Fears Death is a book I will never forget, but I'm not sure I'll reread it; it contains some scenes I'm reluctant to revisit. Several early scenes — a gang rape and a female circumcision — nearly made me abandon the book because they were painful to read. I’m glad I persisted, though; before long I was swept up in Onyesonwu’s story and couldn’t put the book down. The night I finished, I stayed up far too late turning pages, and after closing the book, I couldn’t sleep. Okorafor includes some tantalizing ambiguities, and I lay awake turning these ambiguities over and over in my mind. I love a book that makes me tear up and makes me think at the same time.
Read my review of the audiobook below.
—Kelly Lasiter
Who Fears Death
One of last year’s most striking fantasy novels was Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death. Brilliance Audio has now released an audio version of Who Fears Death, and I recommend it with great enthusiasm.
I discuss the plot at greater length in my review of the print book, above, but here is a brief summary: Who Fears Death takes the classic “hero’s journey” and “quest fantasy” archetypes and sets them in — rather than an ersatz Middle-Earth — a bleak, post-apocalyptic Sudan. The heroine, Onyesonwu (whose name translates as “who fears death?”), progresses through plot points that are familiar in their broad strokes but innovative in their particulars: magical training with the local sage, traveling the landscape with a band of allies, facing off against a Dark Lord, and so forth. The novel can be disturbing, as it includes topics such as weaponized rape, female circumcision, and morally troubling decisions by Onyesonwu herself. Yet Okorafor also places scenes of transcendent beauty in Who Fears Death, and saves some of her most striking prose for these passages.
Brilliance Audio’s production of Who Fears Death is narrated by Anne Flosnik. Flosnik’s voice is so gorgeous that I would happily listen to her read the phone book. Coupled with Okorafor’s prose, the effect is enchanting indeed. The one thing I will mention is that Flosnik acts out the accent that Onyesonwu might have, which means it takes a little extra concentration to follow the narrative. Then again, this is a book you’ll want to pay close attention to anyway. Who Fears Death is the polar opposite of a light read; it’s complex, thought-provoking, unsettling — and often beautiful.
—Kelly Lasiter
 Akata Witch — (2011) Young adult. Publisher: Twelve-year-old Sunny lives in Nigeria, but she was born American. Her features are African, but sheÕs albino. She's a terrific athlete, but can't go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits. And then she discovers something amazing — she is a "free agent," with latent magical power. Soon she's part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But will it be enough to help them when they are asked to catch a career criminal who knows magic too?
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