Thoughts on Tade Thompson’s Rosewater

Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash

I read an excerpt from Tade Thompson’s Rosewater some years ago and liked it enough that I bought myself a copy last Juneteenth. And then didn’t get around to reading it until now.

The Concept

Rosewater centers around an unusual alien incursion. The aliens are huge and smash into planets and infect them.

Wormwood, as the alien is dubbed (a Revelations reference) hits Hyde Park in London. The alien infection causes all kinds of things, including a portion of the population developing “psychic” abilities.

Oh, and America removing itself dramatically from the world stage, putting some kind of dome over the entire country and going full blown dystopia. This appears to be Thompson’s way of centering the story elsewhere.

Specifically, its centered on a place where Wormwood has surfaced in Nigeria.

This puts the book strongly in the subgenre of Africanfuturism, which is not the same thing as Afrofuturism. Nnedi Okorafor explains it better than I can here.

The Protagonist

Our protagonist is Kaaro (no other name), a “sensitive” and a finder who’s real job is as a spy for Nigeria’s corrupt government. We first see him, though, at his side hustle, where he works for a bank providing a telepathic…