Wole Talabi is a Nigerian science fiction writer. He has previously published one novel and two short story collections, as well as having texts in various sf anthologies. His new novel. THE FIST OF MEMORY, is forthcoming in October 2026; I got to read an advance copy via Netgalley, which grants access to advance copies of novels in return for writing a review. (I have ordered a paid copy for my Kindle anyway; these advance copies tend to have a date after which they disappear from your tablet or other device).
THE FIST OF MEMORY is far more ambitious than Talabi’s previous books, and it lives up to its ambitions. It is set in a near-future Nigeria, which still suffers from many of the same problems that beset the country today. Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa; after formerly being a British colony, it gained independence in 1960. It is a diverse country with multiple ethnic groups whp speak multiple languages; the official language is English. Nigeria suffered civil war from 1967-1970. In Talabi’s near future, there has also been a second civil war; the country remains as fractious as it is vibrant.
THE FIST OF MEMORY is both a political thriller and a first-contact-with-aliens story. The novel switches between a number of different points of view, one of them recounted in the first person, the others in a close third person. The action is kicked off by an alien spacecraft that is approaching the Earth. Nobody knows who or what the aliens are; elites on Earth regard the approaching vessel as a threat, though most people on the ground are too concerned with their more immediate problems to worry much about it. The Americans try to destroy the craft while it is still in outer space, but they fail. The alien approach remains in the background for most of the novel, but many actions on Earth are taken in response to it. In terms of technology, the main novum of the novel is an implant that people have in their skulls, that talk to them sort of like a second self, and that have WiFi-like ties to all sorts of things in the physical world. It is still possible to drive your car manually, for instance, but most of the time people just leave the driving to their implants, which communicate with and control the less-advanced AI embedded in the automobile.
The first-person narrator of many chapters is a woman named Tope, who is a professional assassin. She was raised by a mysterious figure named Baba, who took her in and trained her after her parents were killed in an earlier period of civll strife. Baba is both a spymaster and a witch doctor; he runs Tope and a number of other agents, and takes orders from (or is a representative of) a shady group known only as the Elders, who secretly control the country. The Elders are not entirely sinister: their main goal is to keep civil peace and avoid the dangers of yet another civil war. But they are ruthless, and they brook no opposition; Baba is only one of a number of people who take orders from them.
There is also a second professional assassin, Ahanna, who also ultimately takes orders from the Elders, but who has a personal grudge with Tope — because Tope was involved in the past with killing Ahanna’s family, and he is determined to kill her in revenge. And there is also Ufuoma, an aide to the President of Nigeria; but she actually owes her loyalty to the Elders, and she murders the President when they demand it of her. The most important character who is not involved in the murder business is an astrophysicist from South Africa named Itumeleng, who discovers the alien craft in the first place, and then comes to Nigeria for personal reasons.
All of this is multiply overdetermined, and I don’t want to get into all the plot details here. (But to give one for instance, the reason the Elders have the President killed is because he is a devout Christian, and believes that the alien spacecraft portends the Second Coming of Jesus).
In any case, the immiment arrival of the alien spacecraft sets things in to motion. We follow both Tope (in first person) and Ahanna (in close third person) through their various contract killings. They are both ultimately sympathetic characters in spite of everything. The plotting is tight, and most of the characters have little room for maneuver besides doing the jobs they have been commissioned to do. But Tope has a conscience, despite her businesslike approach to her job as a killer.
Again, without giving away too many plot details, Tope finds herself murdering the right person for the wrong reason; she gets into trouble with the Elders and with her mentor Baba precisely at the moment that she has been motivated by humane impulses. Tope and Itumeleng find their paths crossing, and end up collaborating with one another for good reasons, even though their trajectories are entirely separate. All this works not only because of Talabi’s careful plotting of the novel, but also because his characters are compelling, and their dilemmas feel real and relatable. (Though I hope I never find myself involved in any of the sorts of buisness described i the novel).
Talabi gives us a dense and vivid picture of future Nigeria as well; it feels entirely convincing to me, though I have never visited past or present Nigeria. Though the characters are mostly loners, their actions only make sense in terms of both the actual social background, and the imminent alien contact.
The conclusion of the novel is the most ambitious part of it all. It draws on tropes of alien encounter together with currents of Afrofuturism and African spirituality, as well as what the author in his Acknowledgements calls “afrocommunitarian philosophy”. The gamble of the novel is to present a world that is in many respects violent and technologically driven, but at the same time gives space to African traditional values (such as ties to the ancestors). By the end this gets overwhelming; I am inclined to say that it is a bit much, but also that it succeeds in carrying conviction, as it leads from a difficult present/future to a visionary conclusion.