Death of the Author

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, ableism, and mental illness.

Death of the Author is a novel about agency and the quest to fulfill one’s long-held ambitions. Part of what sets the novel apart, however, is the specificity of the protagonist’s circumstances and how they define the challenges that separate her from her goals. Zelu is not obstructed by her paraplegia but by how people perceive her ability to function because of it. 

One way in which the novel explores this tension is through Zelu’s novel, Rusted Robots. At Amarachi’s wedding, Zelu is called “leg-less” and “crippled” by members of her extended family, who already look down on her for being unmarried in her thirties. Zelu pours her frustrations into her novel, which becomes an extended discourse on the dichotomy of embodiment and disembodiment, explored through characters who manifest in a variety of ways, not all of them physical. Ankara, the protagonist of Zelu’s novel, is an embodied character who values her link to humanity above all things. Zelu’s compassionate and supportive depiction of Ankara connects to her own understanding of the value of embodiment.