There are stories of Daughter of Death and sure signs of pervasive corporate reach. This is the place where drones and self-driving cars and hashtags and “jelli-telli” coexist with religion and legends and mud huts and shea tree farms. In Okorafor’s world Sankofa walks the boundary between modern life and folk tales, the interplay between organic and technological. And it also is a story of betrayals, because the world is full of them, big and small. And it’s a story of a young girl growing up and coming to terms with herself.

“She’d broken the bird just as she’d broken her family and her entire hometown.”Īt its heart, is the exploration of grief, trauma, facing your past, search for normalcy and belonging in decidedly abnormal circumstances. It does not have a defined streamlined plot but instead is almost episodic, weaving itself along with Sankofa’s slow journey, slowly building up to something more, something that we just glimpse in the end. It’s a mesmerizing internally-focused quiet novella blending folk tale and magical realism and just a hint of science-fictional happenings deep under its roots. You see, she can emanate a strange green light that will take the life of those who happen to be in her path if they cross her.Īnd it all started with a strange seed that came from the sky with the meteor shower. Now she’s Sankofa, one of the new myths and legends, walking the roads from town to town, admired and feared because the legends portray her as Death’s adopted daughter. Once upon a time, in the near-future Ghana, little Fatima was a little girl who liked watching stars from the branches of her parents’ shea tree. It was hoping, wishing, praying that she would pass through, a wraith in the darkness.” “Sankofa felt the town staring at her as she walked. Learn more about Nnedi at and follow Nnedi on twitter (as Facebook and Instagram. She lives with her daughter Anyaugo in Phoenix, AZ. Her debut novel Zahrah the Windseeker won the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature. Her many works include Who Fears Death (winner of the World Fantasy Award and in development at HBO as a TV series), the Nebula and Hugo award winning novella trilogy Binti (in development as a TV series), the Lodestar and Locus Award winning Nsibidi Scripts Series, LaGuardia (winner of a Hugo and Eisner awards for Best Graphic Novel) and her most recent novella Remote Control. Born in the United States to two Nigerian (Igbo) immigrant parents and visiting family in Nigeria since she was a child, the foundation and inspiration of Nnedi’s work is rooted in this part of Africa. The more specific terms for her works are africanfuturism and africanjujuism, both terms she coined and defined.

Nnedi Okorafor is a New York Times Bestselling writer of science fiction and fantasy for both children and adults.

Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor