Binti (Binti #1)

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Nnedi Okorafor's Africanfuturistic Binti trilogy is a story from the space-travel-dreamer's dreams with a protagonist whose courageous heart and emotional depth grounds her galactic adventures. Binti navigates interplanetary and interspecies conflict when she leaves home to attend the galaxy's most prestigious university and, after her spaceship falls under attack, must survive and create peace between worlds. Spellbinding! Recommended By Alexis B., Powells.com

I devoured this book in a single sitting. Now, it's a novella, so that's not terribly impressive, but even if the book had been hundreds of pages long, I would still have put everything on hold to keep reading it. Binti deserves immense praise for crafting more fascinating and in-depth culture in a short work than other sci-fi books create in an entire series.  Recommended By Junix S., Powells.com

Winner of the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novella!

Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.

Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach.

If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself — but first she has to make it there, alive.

"Binti is a supreme read about a sexy, edgy Afropolitan in space! It's a wondrous combination of extra-terrestrial adventure and age-old African diplomacy. Unforgettable!" Wanuri Kahiu, award-winning Kenyan film director of Punzi and From a Whisper

"Binti is utterly captivating... [and] shows that one girl can change the course of the galaxy." Geek Syndicate

"Nnedi Okorafor writes glorious futures and fabulous fantasies. Her worlds open your mind to new things, always rooted in the red clay of reality. Prepare to fall in love with Binti." Neil Gaiman, New York Times bestselling author of American Gods

Nnedi Okorafor, born to Igbo Nigerian parents in Cincinnati, Ohio on April 8, 1974, is an author of fantasy and science fiction for both adults and younger readers. Her children's book Long Juju Man (Macmillan, 2009) won the 2007-08 Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa, and her adult novel Who Fears Death (DAW, 2010) was a Tiptree Honor Book. She is an associate professor of creative writing and literature at the University at Buffalo.