It feels like everywhere I look, I keep seeing Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor. While sci-fi isn’t typically the genre I gravitate to, the idea of a story within a story mixed with africanfuturism -something I’d never read before- intrigued me enough to finally try it.

I ended up reading Death of the Author with a friend of mine. And as much as we wanted to love it, our feelings didn’t exactly mirror the internet’s. In this post I’ll share my detailed notes with you (including spoilers). Consider this your cheat sheet. A play-by-play of this 450-page book.

If you want to watch a spoiler-free version (and see my cute dog) watch it here on my BookTube.

Death of the Author Summary

Death of the Author opens up with a woman named Zelu, an adjunct creative writing professor in Chicago/aspiring author. She’s in her thirties, paraplegic, Nigerian American, and seriously feisty. While attending one of her sister’s weddings in Tobago, Zelu learns she’s been fired for insulting her students (one of many indications of her unlikable character). Her sad little novel gets rejected again.

Professionally speaking, she’s at rock bottom. Although, let it be said, even in dire times, she never seems to have problems attracting suitors. (This strongly contrasted the previous the experience of another disabled protagonist story I read recently: Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa.)

Fueled by rage (and maybe flying high from weed and/or meeting a hot South African start-up guy named Msizi) Zelu gets a spark of inspiration for a brand new type of book – science fiction – and finishes it in a year while living with her parents. Desperate to escape their controlling clutches, Zelu sends the novel off to her agent and *poof* her luck does a complete 180.

Zelu’s book, Rusted Robots, is a monumental success. Literally, no book has ever gotten this much attention in the publishing industry. The whole world wants it. The woman is going to be a billionaire. The book will be published as part of a trilogy and there’s going to be a full-fledged Hollywood movie. Like I said, Death of the Author is a story within a story. The chapters take turns between snippets of Rusted Robots and chapters of Zelu’s real life as well as interviews from her family members.

Rusted Robots Book

Rusted Robots features africanfuturism, Nnedi Okorafor’s literary invention, “a category of science fiction that is “directly rooted in African culture, history, mythology and point-of-view..and…does not privilege or center the West.”

The story is about robots in Nigeria who have survived the end of humanity and are obsessed with storytelling. The only parts of this book I had a problem focusing on were the Rusted Robots chapters. It felt like a children’s story to me, much like WALL-E, but less fun. Keep in mind that I’m not a huge fantasy fan either so if this is your thing, you might very well end up enjoying it. We follow a “hume” (human-like robot) named Ankara who finds out that the earth is going to be destroyed in a year – also reminiscent of Project Hail Mary. She wants to save the planet and it feels like the beginning of a Frodo/Mordor quest.

We meet other “animations” aka types of robots and AI. Basically the villains are “ghosts” or “NoBodies” and they want to wipe out all the robots that tell human-made stories because it reminds them of evil humans. The humes (story-loving robots) and the ghosts start battling it out. Ankara gets beaten up and her legs are nearly destroyed, but she’s rescued by the last human on earth. This woman fixes up Ankara using a combination of a ghost and spare parts. More on this story later. Basically everything that happens in Rusted Robots feels familiar because it mirrors events and themes in Zelu’s actual life, including her accident. It’s very meta.

Zelu gets famous

Despite becoming rich and famous beyond her wildest dreams, Zelu is still not happy. She hates the white-washed movie adaptation of her book and has no inspiration to write the next part of the trilogy. While I could feel her pain with the movie (characters are white, they changed the names, it’s set in the US), she’s the one who decided not to be part of the script adaptation. She’s also getting paid A LOT and owes it to her contract/agent to be professional. She just becomes more and more insufferable and her decision-making just gets worse.

We also learn about the childhood accident that left Zelu paraplegic (falling from a tree). This traumatic accident still gives her panic attacks and flashbacks. We see the accident mirrored in the Rusted Robots story when Ankara gets attacked.

Zelu gets robotic legs

Many chapters of the book are dedicated to Zelu getting robotic prosthetic legs that allow her to walk without a wheelchair. A disabled billionaire is developing these legs and wants Zelu to try them out. The book makes a big deal out of it like her life depends on the success of the operation, when all she has to do is attach them like shoes. The book really makes it sound like it’s life or death 🙄 … We have probably 100 pages of this process being dragged out so I predicted that the legs would end up killing her somehow. I guess it foreshadowed her getting cancelled by her fans, but in the end, they actually save her life in Nigeria when she has to run away from kidnappers. This is mirrored by Ankara getting new legs in the Rusted Robots story.

Her family isn’t supportive at all of the “exos” (legs) and they continue to smother her and treat her like a baby, always worried she’ll fall or hurt herself somehow with the unnatural prosthetics. This is a recurring theme in the book and a lot of people are talking about how ableist and toxic this book is because of the treatment of her Nigerian family. I enjoyed the parts of the book that showed how different she is as a Nigerian American from Nigerians from Nigeria. Even if she’s familiar with the culture, customs, food, language, etc. she is still an outsider and her presence in the country is dangerous for her.

Zelu’s foiled Nigerian kidnapping

The most amped up part of the book that felt like a sci-fi thriller was when Zelu goes to Nigeria. This felt like a completely different book and reminded me of what I didn’t like about The Ministry of Time. Her father dies, and appealing to tradition, he’s buried in his Nigerian village. Zelu’s family is super stressed about her traveling to Nigeria, because of possible danger I couldn’t understand until the worst happened. While Zelu is leaving her father’s village, a group of men tries to hijack their car and kidnap Zelu – probably to demand a ransom, although I didn’t understand why they were shooting at her then?

Zelu is forced to put her exos – the robotic legs – into action and sprints away like a bionic robot. Keep in mind, in every other scene she can barely balance just walking and staying upright in these legs, let alone run faster than a car in them…. She leaves her friends behind (peace, guys!) and runs her butt all the way to the airport like 30 km away. All the while streaming live from her boyfriend’s app and getting the news out. IT IS COMPLETELY ABSURD.

SPACE TIME

Zelu had previously been asked if she wanted go to space for free by a very Elon Musk-inspired character. They first met at her movie premiere in LA. At first she declined the commercial space trip, but we learn that she dreamt of becoming an astronaut as a kid before her accident. After a near-death experience in Nigeria she’s interested again. I had totally predicted that Zelu would end up going to space because it seemed like a good ending for the book. It seemed like maybe she would die there because of the whole ‘Death of the Author’ title. Her family also spoke about her in past tense sometimes in the. interview chapters throughout the book.

Other annoying things happen just before going to space. Zelu’s boyfriend ambushes her with a wedding. They have like half a page of conversation about kids and money before he leads her downstairs to a wedding that’s happening live in the living room. WTF!? Nothing screams romance like that.

Zelu’s family also magically become supportive of her. Are you kidding me?! They have been horrible to her the whole book but now, when she’s about to fly to space, they decide to let her make her own decisions? The implausibilities of this book just keep stacking up for me. It was just a cheesy way to wrap things up with her family at the end. The other thing that is super annoying is Zelu getting pregnant and going to space anyway! She tells the Elon guy that she’s pregnant and they give her some experimental drug to keep the baby safe… So she goes to space.

Rusted Robots Ending

Leading up to the ending of Rusted Robots, the ghosts and the humes are about to battle it out. The chargers from the sun are about to arrive on earth to destroy it any minute. While at first the humes seem like they can’t win, Ankara (general) thinks of something. She remembers that the NoBodies/ghosts can’t stare at lightening. The plan to disable the central power system (or something like that) during the lightening storm that is about to happen. They do this and boom, the ghosts lose power and disappear.

Now to save the planet. Ankara remembers the great wise machine who told her the terrible impending news. He said that one of these chargers liked stories before. Ankara decides to try and distract the chargers with a story of her own, even if humes aren’t suppossed to be able to create new stories themselves. Miraculously, Ankara writes the first ever original hume story and transmits it to the chargers. They love the story and end up abandoning the mission (or something). The planet is saved! By the way, Ankara’s story is the Zelu story.

Death of the Author Ending Explained

The hume story that Ankara uses to save the planet is about Zelu’s life (everything we read). The theme is that “creation flows both ways”. Zelu was writing about Ankara and Ankara was writing about Zelu, who turns out to be the astronaut great grandmother of the last woman on earth. This trippy and very meta ending must have been hard to pull off, but it felt rushed on both sides. The fact that the hume, who is AI, wrote the book that saved the planet is causing a stir in reviews. It makes it sound like the author could be praising AI in publishing. Personally, I think it’s just another way to make the story feel meta since this topic is relevant in the real world. Same goes with the billionaire characters that could be Musk/Bezos inspired. Personally I didn’t really like this book but I’ve never read anything like it before.

Watch my full spoiler-free book review to hear more!

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