The Shadow Speaker is a young adult, first-person novel by Nigerian-American writer Nnedi Okorafor, which takes place in the year 2070. It was a Booksense Pick for Winter 2007/2008, a Tiptree Honor Book, a finalist for the Essence Magazine Literary Award, the Andre Norton Award and the Golden Duck Award and an NAACP Image Award nominee. Plot Ejimafor "Ejii" Ugabe is a fourteen-year-old Muslim half-Wodaabe, half-Igbo girl. She lives in the Nigerian village of Kwàmfa. Her father was once the hated dictator-like chief. She lives in the year 2070. The whole world is falling apart due to nuclear fallout in “the early twenty-first century”. Characters Ejimafor Ugabe - The 14-year-old daughter of the former Kwamfa Chief and one of the trusted advisers of the Sarauniya Jaa, the Red Queen. Sarauniya Jaa - The Red Queen. She is not an actual queen, but is treated like one. She witnessed the Great Change while a captive of a tribe who claimed her to be their queen. She was fourteen at the time. When she speaks a red flower always accompanies her words. Chief Ugabe - A hypocritical chief. He is said that he is of the fierce Woddabe tribe. When Jaa came to Kwamfa, the chief came along as an apprentice. He came back 1 month later. He seated himself chief in, quote, “...the name of our nurturing queen, Sarauniya Jaa!”. He apparently used that as an excuse to carry out his evil deeds. One day, Jaa came to Kwamfa and confronted the man and accused him of using her name in vain and doing things that she would never agree to do. Then she sliced his head off, and it rolled into a meat-eating plant which ate it. All in front of his oldest child, Ejii, and oldest son, Fadio (Ejii's half-brother). He was eventually buried without his head. Gambo - He is a co-husband of Jaa. He used to be an Aejej. He was turned into one when he was a child. Jaa was being attacked by him and she started talking to him. A Red flower fell as he calmed down and he turned back into a human. He would still be an Aejej in our time because according to the novel, he was an aejej a short while before the 21st century. That would mean that the Aejej is not a product of the Great Change. Buji -