Fantasy author Nnedi Okorafor's novel Zahrah the Windseeker is the winner of this year's Wole Soyinka Prize, an award given to African writers, named in honor of African Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka. The award comes with a cash prize of $20,000 and was presented in Lagos, Nigeria.
The novel tells the story of Zahrah, a shy teenager who learns that she has the ability to fly. "When she and her best friend, Dari, venture into the forbidden forest in search of privacy so she can practice her flying, Dari is bitten by a rare war snake," Okorafor said in an interview. "He falls into a coma, and only the serum of the egg of a terrible beast can cure him. That beast happens to reside hundreds of miles in the forbidden forest. Guilt-stricken and distraught, Zahrah ventures into the forest to find this egg. And so the adventures begins."
Before writing Zahrah the Windseeker, Okorafor had written stories that explored the milieu, but Zahrah explored a part and culture of this world that she hadn't written about yet. "The great forest Zahrah ventures into came to me one night when I was looking out into the forest that surrounds the house my family owns in Nigeria," she said. "This warm evening I was watching a swarm of bats fly into the forest to forage for food. A wind swept over the trees, rippling through the leaves. That was when I grasped the idea. The forest seemed so alive."
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Amanda Hall's original cover illustration for Zahrah the Windseeker.
Several bits of Nigerian myth and folklore and culture played a great role in the novel. "The world [Zahrah] lives in is based on Nigeria, right down to the layout of her city (which is based on an old map I found of the Yoruba city of Ile-Ife)," Okorafor said. "The foods, the names, clothes, certain behaviors, etc., are Nigerian--from various ethnic groups. For example, Zahrah is a Hausa name (the Hausas are highly influenced by Arab culture)."
Zahrah the Windseeker would be categorized as fantasy--a genre that basically doesn't exist in Africa, Okorafor said. "The prize was presented to me in Nigeria by one of my greatest heroes (Nobel Prize Laureate Wole Soyinka) in front of several of my extended family members," she said. "The award and the experience of it were amazing on so many levels. It was like a great big embrace from the continent and a proud nod from the ancestors and attentive spirits."
-John Joseph Adams
