Who Fears Death

Narrator Anne Flosnik adopts an accented, hushed tone for the character of Onyesonwu, whose mixed race is the focal point of this story of warring tribes somewhere in Africa at some time in the future. Born of the rape of her mother by a sorcerer, she begins her life wandering in the desert, and after a number of years of living in a village, she returns to a life in the desert. There her nascent talent for magic develops, and she moves closer and closer to a confrontation with her birth father. Flosnik quietly follows the subdued moods of Onyesonwu through her adolescence and the beginning of her journey. As the drama intensifies, Flosnik accentuates the suspense of Onyesonwu's struggle to survive. J.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

Starred review from April 5, 2010
Well-known for young adult novels (The Shadow Speaks
; Zahrah the Windseeker
), Okorafor sets this emotionally fraught tale in postapocalyptic Saharan Africa. The young sorceress Onyesonwu—whose name means “Who fears death?”—was born Ewu, bearing a mixture of her mother's features and those of the man who raped her mother and left her for dead in the desert. As Onyesonwu grows into her powers, it becomes clear that her fate is mingled with the fate of her people, the oppressed Okeke, and that to achieve her destiny, she must die. Okorafor examines a host of evils in her chillingly realistic tale—gender and racial inequality share top billing, along with female genital mutilation and complacency in the face of destructive tradition—and winds these disparate concepts together into a fantastical, magical blend of grand storytelling.