Well, they say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but in this case — have at it. The cover is incredible; if I saw it in a bookshop, I’m pretty sure that I’d have bought it on spec. I don’t go to bookshops, but the cover looked just as good on a large screen, so here are.
Death of the Author is the story of Zelu, a wheelchair-bound writer from a large Nigerian family, struggling to make a living as a lecturer in Creative Writing while penning a novel. Her family are wealthy, well-meaning, if not a little over-protective. Having got into a disagreement with one of her students (Zelu doesn’t take prisoners: if you’re writing is crap, she’ll tell you), she loses her job and so throws herself body and soul into her book. It’s called Rusted Robots and it becomes an international bestseller. It should be easy street from here on out, but as it turns out, not so much … The book is turned into a film which Zelu hates as it’s so far removed from her original story, she barely recognises it. And you’d think her family would finally be proud of her, but again — not so much. And of course, the world is waiting for her to write the sequel. …
Like its cover, Death of the Author is rich, deep, and beautifully crafted. The detail portrayal of each character is breathtaking. There’s a lot of switching between the past and the present, and a couple of differing viewpoints (mostly third-person, occasionally first) are thrown in for good measure. And if that wasn’t enough, we are also treated to excerpts from the book Zelu has written. Yup, it sounds a lot, but it holds together perfectly. It’s an incredibly smooth read, given how deeply it goes into every character.
Likewise, I can’t really fault the scene-setting; it’s not overly detailed, giving the reader plenty of room to build the world inside their head.
The prose I would describe as not-quite-literary, but still, I found the occasional turn of phrase that had me thinking, “Oh, that is good.”
Now, here’s the question: is it really sci-fi? Certainly, the author in question, is writing a sci-fi novel, and you get to see plenty of it, but I probably wouldn’t say the Death of the Author itself is a science-fiction piece. I’d probably say that it’s a light-literary story (okay, fair enough; it is a bit literary then …) about the human experience. It’s raw with emotion, packed with interesting characters, and I daresay that at some point in the next few years, I’ll probably read it again.