Who Fears Death

Content Ratings

Moderate Romance

Onyesonwu falls in love and the novel depicts their sexual relationship with moderate but not graphic explicitness; the relationship is emotionally central and developed over the course of the novel.

Intense Themes

The novel is a sustained confrontation with rape as a weapon of war, the cultural and bodily violence of genital cutting, systemic racial hierarchy enforced through genocide, and the burden carried by children born from violence.

High Violence

The novel depicts rape as a weapon of genocide, female genital cutting performed on Onyesonwu as a child, brutal ethnic cleansing, and physical combat; violence is depicted with directness and without sensationalism, but it is sustained and deeply distressing.

Synopsis

Born from rape during a genocidal ethnic conflict in a post-apocalyptic Africa, Onyesonwu discovers she has powerful shapeshifting magic and sets out to confront the sorcererâ€”and the deeply embedded social structuresâ€”responsible for the oppression of her people. A stunning and brutal novel drawing on West African mythology that addresses rape, female genital cutting, racism, and genocide with extraordinary force and specificity. One of the most important and challenging science fantasy novels of the century.