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 … 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 the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself but first she has to make it there, alive.
PRAISE FOR BINTI
“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
At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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One of my all-time favorite books.
This was a wonderful story with a world view I’m not familiar with because my childhood had little in common. But it sings of truth, of things that connect us, and most of all that faith in the core of yourself and your beliefs is often the most important thing. If you want a book to make you think, smile, and desire to meet other worlds, other societies. This is one for you.
Take the leap, you won’t regret it.
Binti was an interesting, fun short novel. Binti is the first person from her community/ethnic group(?) to be accepted into the most prestigious University in their interstellar civilization. She is a brilliant mathematician, enough strength of character to run away from home to attend the University. And she has hidden depths and talents – some of which are explored in the harrowing adventure that begins before she even reaches school. Her background is refreshingly different from the typical mathematical prodigy in SF. I am not comfortable with the apparent accommodation of mass murder, but Binti’s universe is not idyllic and I definitely look forward to visiting it again.
I liked the complexity of the main character and the descriptions of her culture. The plot was not as great but good enough for a short novella.
Very interesting story can’t wait to read next one
A fine example of sci-fi writing at its best, creating a believable but new world. I look forward to the next in the series.
Binti is a heroine anyone could relate to and wish the best for
I was amazed at how much could be packed into a story that’s actually quite short. It was a wonderful read I highly recommend any sci-fi fan,
I listened to this as an audiobook and the narrator was brilliant. The story was fabulous (although short), I kept stopping what I was doing (I listen to audiobooks while doing other tasks) to pay attention. Looking forward to listening/reading the rest of the series!
Makes you want to mentor and be mentored by the character and the author. I want so much more of BINTI, her family, her world, her future. I can see this as a full length film.
Read this one
The whole series was very enjoyable!
This novella was an awesome quick read. Okorafor builds worlds and characters with equal skill, placing the reader squarely inside the frame. I love the messages about culture and identity. Both were so skillfully woven through the story that, even though these themes were clear and well-defined, the reader never feels bludgeoned by them. They support the plot without overwhelming it. I will definitely be reading more by this author.
One of the most original books I have ever read. I went on to read everything that Nnedi Okorafor has published.
This book sacrifices any possibility of an entertaining story in order to portray social injustice. If that interests you… otherwise, give it a pass. It put me off this author permanently because no writerly skills were displayed. The tragedy, characters and the world-building were uninteresting. In fairness, it might be early in the author’s career.
I like several things about Binti. The author wrote a story about a young, intelligent girl possessed of an unusual but not earth shattering power that finds herself in a dangerous situation on the way to building her dream. She uses jet intelligence and empathy to survive that peril and comes out different and probably better for it. This sounds like a plot that had been done so many times it has passed from cliche to irrelevance, but Okurafur has put so many imaginative and subliminally subversive details in Binti, that it felt like my first time reading that plot.
One of my favorite elements is that Binti comes from a culture that is alien to most of the audience, but is a culture that grew out of cultures that exist here on Earth now. Another is that, while Binti is extraordinarily, she isn’t a Magical Girl Chosen One Annie Oakley superhero. Both of these get strained near the end of the series, but to me the ending felt more like “where we’re going we don’t need roads” than “my name is Neo”. There is also one micro element, almost inconsequential to the plot, that makes me smile when I think about it but could really make some readers angry when they pick up on it. I think that one little selenium like micro element is what truly makes the world of Binti truly special in the field of science fiction and fantasy.
I recommend it.
I love reading books by people that grew up in totally different cultures than I. Especially when they write sci-fi and fantasy. There’s such an interesting flavor to the story line and characters when the books are written as well as this that give me a perspective that I’d never otherwise seen.
This book was great and I definitely recommend it. So very creative and visual.
First contact in a way I’ve never seen it, from a different cultural lens than the usual.
Science fiction saved my life. It kept me alive during a bleak and soulless teenager-hood. Then, in my 20s, I moved on to other things and science fiction drifted away. Every so often, I pick up an award winner to relive the old days and to see what’s happening in the genre. This is what lead me to Binti–a Hugo and Nebular winner.
Within the first couple of paragraphs, I knew the author had no mastery of her craft. But in science fiction, bad prose can be forgiven for a good story or an imaginative universe or even a little character development. The story was dull, the world the author configured uninspired, the depiction of the main character’s “otherness” cliched.
But then, at the end, I thought the story might be redeemed.
Binti, our heroine, talks the white power structure into returning the alien chief’s “stinger” — a body part. It was this theft that had caused an inter-species war. Before she returns the stinger, Binti rubs it with her special sauce. For a brief moment, I thought the author had slyly hidden a subversive, anti-feminist narrative under the camouflage of a social justice narrative that was tediously Mao-like in its lack of ideological nuance. For Binti was re-masculating the alien patriarch by returning his stinger (you know, his penis) and masturbating him by rubbing it with her sauce.
Was the author toying with her super-woke readers?
Short, fast-moving, a bit shallow
I didn’t know what to expect from the book — there is just so much commotion about it. I wis it was longer. I wish the author took her time to explore the complex emotional dynamics between different alien species. In the end, it was just too predictable, too by the formula. But it was an easy two hours of a restful afternoon…