Death of the Author - Outside of a Dog

Hardcover, 448 pages

English language

Published Jan. 14, 2025 by HarperCollins Publishers.

ISBN:: 9780063391154

(2 reviews)

The future of storytelling is here.

Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots.

When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a …

The future of storytelling is here.

Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots.

When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.

A book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written, Death of the Author is a masterpiece of metafiction that manages to combine the razor-sharp commentary of Yellowface with the heartfelt humanity of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Surprisingly funny, deeply poignant, and endlessly discussable, this is at once the tale of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it.

The Deluxe Limited Edition features a special alternate cover design on the hardcover case, gorgeous sprayed edges, and exclusive endpapers.

4 editions

Pretty Greene Leaves 🌿 reviewed Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

None

5 stars

This was a really interesting book, and I think it's one where I kinda blame the blurb for messing up my reading of it. The basic premise is that a Nigerian-American woman, down on her luck, writes a book about robots in a post human future that ends up becoming a huge international success (not a spoiler, literally part of the blurb). But then the blurb says "something strange begins to happen", which made me expect something supernatural or magical realism-ish to happen, and I kept expecting, and kept expecting, but it didn't come. Because that's not really the type of book this is. It's really just a book about this woman's experience of life and family, and navigating the world with a disability. It is a beautiful book. I love it, and I think I want to try listening to it again sometime later with this mentality. I won't …

This was a really interesting book, and I think it's one where I kinda blame the blurb for messing up my reading of it. The basic premise is that a Nigerian-American woman, down on her luck, writes a book about robots in a post human future that ends up becoming a huge international success (not a spoiler, literally part of the blurb). But then the blurb says "something strange begins to happen", which made me expect something supernatural or magical realism-ish to happen, and I kept expecting, and kept expecting, but it didn't come. Because that's not really the type of book this is. It's really just a book about this woman's experience of life and family, and navigating the world with a disability. It is a beautiful book. I love it, and I think I want to try listening to it again sometime later with this mentality. I won't spoil why the blurb thought those words were appropriate, it's truly best to put the book in your queue, forget why you put it there, and read it without the blurb. Buy the book and scribble over the blurb with sharpy.

Alexander

rated it

May 15