Who Fears Death
- 401
- Pages
- about 7 h
- Reading time
- World Fantasy Award for Best Novel
- Imaginales award for best foreign-language novel
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Our view
Nnedi Okorafor builds a richly imagined post-apocalyptic East African world in “Who Fears Death” and writes its women with nuance. The story follows the shape of a hero’s journey, with characters to care about and real emotional depth. Some readers find it long and dense, others at times too quick, and others again point out its explicit scenes and adult themes.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Who Fears Death is a science fantasy novel by Nigerian-American writer Nnedi Okorafor, published in 2010 by DAW, then an imprint of Penguin Books. It was awarded the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, as well as the 2010 Carl Brandon Kindred Award "for an outstanding work of speculative fiction dealing with race and ethnicity." Okorafor wrote a prequel, the novel The Book of Phoenix, published by DAW in 2015.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.6 across 140 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 49% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Fantasy average of 8.0. That is how 7.9 comes out. A further +0.10 comes from the small bonus for major awards.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.6 | 19 | 14% |
| Hardcover | 7.6 | 121 | 86% |
Frequently asked
How long is Who Fears Death?
It has 401 pages — shorter than 76% of the ranked books in Fantasy.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Fantasy — and a score of 7.9, the closest to this book.
