About this Event
Books Inc. in partnership with Litquake is proud to present award-winning and bestselling author Nnedi Okarafor for a celebration of her new novel: Death of the Author!
Nnedi will be in conversaiton with Faith Adiele.
This event is co-presented with the
Death of the Author is an exhilarating tale. A disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative—a surprisingly cutting, yet heartfelt drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what makes us human. This is a story unlike anything you’ve read before.
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.
"Don’t be frightened by the title. Nnedi Okorafor is fine… and doing her best work yet. Death of the Author reads like three novels in one, or maybe four, about fame and family, culture and change, the power of story, the writer’s life… and robots. This one has it all.” -George R.R. Martin
“Spellbinding… As delicious as it is disorienting.” -Zakiya Dalila Harris, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Back Girl, in the New York Times Book Review
"A genre-defying metafictional experiment . . . Mind-bending." -New York Times Book Review, Alexandra Alter
"Fans of masterful storytelling should definitely check out Death of The Author by Nnedi Okarafor. It blends genres in the most perfect way to be a suspenseful, timely and heartfelt read. I can’t wait for everyone to read this book!” -People Magazine, Monique Richburg
“I was captivated by the story—and the many stories-within-the-story—of this ambitious, inventive tribute to the power of storytelling itself.”-Nikki Erlick, New York Times bestselling author of The Measure
“Nnedi Okorafor is so ferociously talented that we are starting to see she cannot be boxed into any category or genre. Her new novel, Death of the Author, is a deeply felt dazzle. A blaze. It is true deep to the bones.” -Luis Alberto Urrea, Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of The House of Broken Angels
"There’s more vivid imagination in a page of Nnedi Okorafor’s work than in whole volumes." -Ursula K. Le Guin
"Okorafor's book bounces between the novel (about the writer) and the novel-within-the novel (about the robots), and the result is an ambitious blend of genres." -NPR
"One of her most revealing, deeply felt, and insightful novels to date." -Locus magazine, Gary K. Wolfe
“A remarkable exploration of storytelling, fame and the Nigerian American experience, Death of the Author surprises all the way to its brilliant ending.”-BookPage (starred review)
“[Her work is] irresistible to readers. Her nearly two dozen works of fiction have earned Okorafor a slew of honors—four Hugos, a Nebula, a World Fantasy Award. And a new generation of American storytellers who explicitly use their African heritage, history and mythology to inspire their work have followed in her wake, including Tomi Adeyemi, Ayana Gray, Jordan Ifueko and Namina Forna. . . . Connection is the heartbeat of Okorafor’s work.” -New York Times, 12 African Artists Leading a Culture Renaissance Around the World
"One of [Okorafor's] most revealing, deeply felt, and insightful novels to date." -Locus Magazine, Gary K. Wolfe
Faith Adiele writes and speaks about race, culture and travel. She is author of Meeting Faith, a memoir about ordaining as Thailand’s first Black Buddhist nun that won the PEN Open Book Award and routinely appears on travel listicles. Her media credits include Sleep Stories (CALM app), two episodes of A World of Calm (HBOMax), and the documentary My Journey Home (PBS), about finding her family in Nigeria. Founder of the nation’s first writing workshop for travelers of color, she teaches at California College of the Arts and leads writing workshops around the world.
Nnedi Okorafor is the author of multiple award-winning and New York Times bestsellers, including Death of the Author, the Binti trilogy, Who Fears Death, and Lagoon, currently in development at Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. She has won every major prize in speculative fiction, including the World Fantasy, Nebula, and Eisner Awards; multiple Hugo Awards; and the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. Born in Cincinnati to Igbo Nigerian immigrant parents, she now resides in Phoenix, Arizona, with her daughter, Anyaugo.
Date:02/13/2025Time:7:00pm
Place:Books Inc. in Opera Plaza/SF
601 Van Ness
San Francisco, CA 94102
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Books Inc. Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 35.21
