Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nsukka, Nigeria. She completed a master’s degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore and a master’s degree in African Studies at Yale University. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003) was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. Adichie was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University during the 2005-2006 academic year. Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), set during the Nigerian-Biafran war of the late 1960s, won the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. She is a 2008 MacArthur Foundation fellow and currently divides her time between the United States and Nigeria. Her new collection of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck, will be published in April 2009. Her visit is supported by HarperCollins Publishers.
Visit Chimamanda's unofficial website
Visit the website for Half of a Yellow Sun
Read The New York Times review of Half of a Yellow Sun
BOOKS
Purple Hibiscus
The limits of fifteen−year−old Kambili′s world are defined by the high walls of her family estate and the dictates of her repressive and fanatically religious father. Her life is regulated by schedules: prayer‚ sleep‚ study‚ and more prayer. When Nigeria begins to fall apart during a military coup‚ Kambili′s father‚ involved mysteriously in the political crisis‚ sends Kambili and her brother away to live with their aunt. In this house‚ full of energy and laughter‚ she discovers life and love − and a terrible‚ bruising secret deep within her family. Centring on the promise of freedom and the pain and exhilaration of adolescence‚ Purple Hibiscus is the extraordinary debut of a remarkable talent.
"A sensitive and touching story of a child exposed too early to religious intolerance and the uglier side of the Nigerian state." -Observer Books of the Year
Half of a Yellow Sun
Half of a Yellow Sun follows the lives of five very different characters as they are swept up in rapidly−escalating violent political turmoil. These characters are propelled into violent events that will pull them apart and bring them together in the most unexpected ways‚ testing their ideals and stretching their loyalties to breaking point. This heart−rendering novel is about Africa on an epic scale‚ taking in the end of colonialism‚ ethnic and racial boundaries‚ class struggles‚ moral responsibility‚ the difficulties of love‚ and much‚ much more.
The Thing Around Your Neck
In 'A Private Experience,' a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman whose dignity and faith force her to confront the realities and fears she's been pushing away. In 'Tomorrow Is Too Far,' a woman unlocks the devastating secret that surrounds her brother's death. The young mother at the center of 'Imitation' finds her comfortable life threatened when she learns that her husband back in Lagos has moved his mistress into their home. And the title story depicts the choking loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to an America that turns out to be nothing like the country she expected; though falling in love brings her desires nearly within reach, a death in her homeland forces her to re-examine them. Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow and longing, this collection of short stories is a resounding confirmation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's prodigious storytelling powers.