The Black Pages (Black Stars, #2)

by Nnedi Okorafor

Forget them. Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean. —Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The man had died like this because of his mouth, not because of the manuscripts for which Timbouctou had become famous.

His mother had once told him that only half of them were actually blood relatives, but none of that really mattered; uncles were uncles.

They seem to want to destroy all things that are about knowledge, history, and free thought.”

They want to erase the history of our people. They want to erase our ancestors. Wipe them all away and replace them with the memory of the Arab. It is a false jihad against the genius of the black African. It is not Islam at all.”

“It’s black because it is so full of words, there is no space untouched.”