Nnedi Okorafor wins World Fantasy award
Who Fears Death is the story of Onyesonwu – her name means “who fears death” in Igbo – a woman with great magical powers who was conceived when her mother was raped during a battle. It beat South African novelist Lauren Beukes’s Arthur C Clarke award-winning Zoo City, acclaimed Canadian author Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under […]
Who Fears Death is the story of Onyesonwu – her name means “who fears death” in Igbo – a woman with great magical powers who was conceived when her mother was raped during a battle. It beat South African novelist Lauren Beukes’s Arthur C Clarke award-winning Zoo City, acclaimed Canadian author Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under Heaven and many-time British Fantasy award winner Graham Joyce’s new novel The Silent Land to win the best novel award, judged by five authors and editors from the science fiction and fantasy genre.
Okorafor, born in the US to two Igbo parents, said it was “good to see a black writer win the prize in a genre dominated by whites”, as well as to see a woman triumph in the male-dominated fantasy milieu. “What makes it even sweeter is this novel is very much about women, particularly African women,” she said. Pointing to her fellow contenders for this year’s best novel prize, NK Jemisin and Karen Lord, she said there were “a lot of dark faces on [the shortlist] this year. And the continent of Africa definitely made its presence known within the novels of several authors on the finalist list, too. There is a Nigerian proverb that goes, ‘When the music changes so does the dance.’ I think over the last several years the music within the genre has been changing and it’s about to get really really interesting.”
A professor of creative writing at Chicago State University as well as an author of young adult novels, Okorafor said she was “utterly shocked … then warm and fuzzy with joy” to win the prize, joining former World Fantasy award best novel winners including Susanna Clarke, Haruki Murakami and Ursula K Le Guin. “Of all the novels I’ve written, I put the most of myself into Who Fears Death and it took the most from me,” she said. “It took me several years to write. It began with the death of my father. I started writing it because I loved him and he died. Writing out my pain was the only way I could cope with it.”
The first scene of the novel is taken from a moment at her own father’s wake, when she found herself alone with his body. Days later, she read an article in the Washington Post, “We Want to Make a Light Baby”, about “horrific” practices in Sudan. “That news story rocked my world. It also showed me why my character was so feared/hated and angry – she was a product of the exact same practice discussed in the article- ‘weaponised rape’,” said Okorafor. “From there, my fierce and powerful character named Onyesonwu took control of the story. Where she went, I followed.”