Interesting Readings In Person! - July - Death of the Author (Okorafor)

\*\*Note: this book was originally scheduled for June, but was moved to July so our requester could be at the meeting! Interesting Readings: a book club for the best in sci-fi, from quirky classics to fresh indie! Our second July selection will be Nnedi Okorafor's DEATH OF THE AUTHOR. https://bookshop.org/p/books/death-of-the-author-a-novel-nnedi-okorafor/33987d7322df1a46?ean=9780063391147 In this exhilarating tale by New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, a disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative—a surprisingly cutting, yet heartfelt drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what makes us human in a compelling work of speculative fiction. The future of storytelling is here. Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots. When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel, a true book-within-a-book, will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come…