Onye meets a blacksmith named Fadil Ogundimu who treats her well, and eventually marries her mother. She doesn't fit with the town people and is often ostracized because she is an Ewu.

Onyesonwu grows up in Jwahir after spending six years in the desert alone with her mother. Onyesonwu is a product of rape, her mother Najeeba's was raped alongside other Okeke women by a Nuru man when her village was attacked and destroyed by the Nurus. The plot shifts back to her arrival in Jwahir. The novel opens with the death of Onyesonwu's Father, which occurs when Onyesonwu was sixteen. The novel is narrated by Onyesonwu to a journalist who interviews her before her execution. On reaching maturity, she goes on a quest to defeat her sorcerous father Daib using her magical powers. the child of an Okeke woman raped by a Nuru man. The novel follows the protagonist, Onyesonwu ( Igbo for 'who fears death'), who is an Ewu, i.e. The first novella is scheduled for publication in 2024. In 2023, Okorafor announced her upcoming novella trilogy She Who Knows which would serve as a prequel and sequel to Who Fears Death and would focus on the life of Najeeba, Onyesonwu's mother. The novel takes place in a post-apocalyptic Africa specifically Sudan, where the light-skinned Nuru oppress the dark-skinned Okeke.

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. Who Fears Death is a science fantasy novel by Nigerian-American writer Nnedi Okorafor, published in 2010 by DAW, an imprint of Penguin Books.

Who fears death novel