Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope: All-Story. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck, and most recently the novel Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Articles by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Wednesday April 3
Strangely Personal: Growing Up in Chinua Achebe’s House
The year that I turned six, my family moved into a bigger house with a staircase that at first terrified me. The family that had just moved out, I learned later, was the Achebe family. I’m not sure if I realized how significant a coincidence this was until I mentioned it some years ago to an editor before my first novel came out. “You know,” I said to her, “it’s really interesting that I grew up in a house that Chinua Achebe had previously lived in.” She stopped and stared at me and said, “No, it’s not interesting. It’s the most important thing you’ve told me”.
Friday October 9
Father Chinedu
I have always wanted to capture God and put God in a bottle and close the cap tight. I was seventeen when I first said this to a priest. The priest’s name was Chinedu and he repeated, “You want to capture God in a bottle?” and began to laugh. He laughed in the most undignified