Nnedi Okorafor's 'Death Of The Author' Explores Art And AI

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4.4 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

Nnedi Okorafor is back on 1A.

And this time, the award-winning speculative fiction author is turning her eyes and her pen from the stars to a story a little closer to reality. But not by much.

"Death of the Author" is her latest novel. It's a book within a book that follows the story of a Nigerian author who publishes a work of science fiction that ends up affecting things far beyond her lifetime. Okorafor's book grapples with the relationship between art and artificial intelligence and the question of who controls a story.

We sit down with the author to talk about these themes and more.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	March is Women's History Month.
0:02.4	So on NPR's Book of the Day podcast, we're kicking it off with a week of women writers,
0:06.9	including one novel about a woman who ditches society and heads to a secluded religious community.
0:12.2	It's something that has really preoccupied me as a writer that the question of how much should I be in the world,
0:20.0	how much should I be out of the world?
0:21.8	That's this week on NPR's Book of the Day podcast.
0:32.1	Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Nettie O'Core, Forr,
0:35.6	is used to bending genres in her fiction.
0:38.2	The author of more than 20 books, she's known for her African futurist works rooted in mythology
0:42.7	from the African continent. Her latest book is called Death of the Author. The novel follows
0:48.3	Zellu, a Nigerian-American writer and adjunct professor living in Chicago. After a string of
0:53.7	rejections from publishing
0:54.9	houses and the sudden loss of her university job, Salyu finds herself struggling to find meaning
0:59.9	and purpose in her life. But in a sudden fit of creativity, she writes a science fiction novel called
1:05.6	Rusted Robots. It's set in a post-apocalyptic earth where humanity has been almost completely wiped out.
1:12.0	Robots and artificial intelligence have inherited the world.
1:15.3	Russet Robots is a book inside a book and exists alongside a real-time account of how its creation changes Salu's life.
1:23.2	Despite the robots and apocalyptic future, death of the author is Nettio Corpour's most autobiographical book yet.
1:29.9	She joins us after the break to talk about it.
1:32.1	I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A podcast where we get to the heart of the story.
1:36.4	We've got a lot to get into. Stay with us.
1:42.8	This message comes from Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies.
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