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.

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.

[5] The novel follows the protagonist, Onyesonwu (Igbo for "who fears death"), who is an Ewu, i.e. the child of an Okeke woman raped by a Nuru man.

Onyesonwu undergoes female circumcision at eleven in an attempt to become normal and accepted by the community against her parents wishes, giving her biological father the chance to haunt her.

She bonds with Mwita and develops her powers of shape shifting, resurrecting creatures, traveling to the ‘wilderness’ (spirit world) and she regrows her clitoris.

Onyesonwu's apprenticeship ends when she is mocked at the market and uses her abilities to make the mockers relive her mother's rape.

On the way, Onyesonwu asks for direction to find the Nuru man prophesied by a Seer to rewrite the Great Book and she discovers that it was she who has been prophesied to rewrite the Great Book which justifies the oppression of the Okeke people and stop the Nuru attack in the west.

They reach a supply town where Onyesonwu and Mwita are stoned because of their Ewu status and Binta is killed in the process.

Onyesonwu uses her ability to move one of her eggs towards Mwita's sperm causing an explosion which injures Diab and eventually leads to his death.

The epilogue, narrated by a Nuru who interviewed Onyesonwu, asserts that she was stoned to death and explains how he worked with his sister to dig her body.

While a narration of the last two chapters by Sola describes Onyesonwu escaping execution by transforming into a Kponyungo and flying east to meet Mwita.

Due to its size and wealth it needed Okeke slaves to do its work but with them gone, Nuru from poorer regions did the Job.

[2] The novel was also inspired in part by Emily Wax's 2004 Washington Post article "We Want to Make a Light Baby," which discussed the use of weaponized rape by Arab militiamen against Black African women in the Darfur conflict.

According to Wax: "The victims and others said the rapes seemed to be a systematic campaign to humiliate the women, their husbands and fathers, and to weaken tribal ethnic lines.

[17] The novel includes a graphic scene in which Onyesonwu is subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM), which she later learns may affect her magical powers.

[18][19] In a blog post, Okorafor commented that she is proud of her Igbo identity, but that "culture is alive and it is fluid.

She added: "What it [i.e., female genital cutting] all boils down to (and I believe the creators of this practice KNEW this even a thousand years ago) is the removal of a woman's ability to properly enjoy the act of sex.

"[19] In July 2017, Okorafor announced the novel was the basis for an HBO television series in "early development", with George R. R. Martin serving as an executive producer;[20][21][22] Selwyn Seyfu Hinds has been selected as scriptwriter.

[23] In January 2021 it was announced that Tessa Thompson's newly formed production company, Viva Maude, had joined the team and Aïda Mashaka Croal is serving as the new scriptwriter.