Lyn's Reviews > Binti

I like originality and I also like a story told economically and writer Nnedi Okorafor gets my high praise in both categories for her 2015 novella Binti.

Okorafor has created in Binti a speculative fiction gem where a reader is led along a culturally alien yet approachable thrill ride. At once fascinating and hair raising, Okorafor has crafted a dynamic tension that grips the reader throughout this short work.

Binti is a student who has been accepted into a far future academy and chooses to attend the university over the protests and prohibitions of her traditional and isolationist family. Being the first of her family from a rural area of Earth, itself described as something of a planetary backwater, to go to this school is difficult enough for Binti, but Okorafor then introduces a far more dangerous cultural conflict through which Binti must survive.



Told with an intensity found more in the horror or thriller genres, this speculative fiction work blends elements of science fiction and fantasy into a very entertaining whole that is reminiscent of Octavia Butler or Ursula K. Le Guin. I also considered a comparison to China Mieville. Okorafor’s use of cultural distinctions, probably inspired from her Nigerian heritage, further separates this very unique novella from the pack of contemporary fiction.

I have long heard her name and knew that I would need to explore her writing. Binti is likely only the first of Okorafor’s work I will enjoy.