Know your Author: CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

If any one has the skills to make books feel like haven it's the talented  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I remember reading  Purple Hibiscus and i was wowed by the storyline,use of words and the intense way she tells her story.  Chimamanda is now a household name in the book world and her novel Half of a Yellow Sun has been transformed into an award winning movie.


 Sit back and enjoy as we get to meet this wonderful storyteller.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born September 15, 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria. She was raised in Nsukka near the University of Nigeria. Her father, James Nwoye Adichie, was a professor of statistics and later became the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University. Her mother, Ifeoma Aidichie, became the first female registrar at the University. Adichie is the fifth child in a family of six children. She is of Igbo descent and her ancestral home is in Aba.

Adichie was an A student who often butted heads with her teachers. Despite her reputation, she received several academic awards. Adichie enrolled in medical school at the behest of her father. She soon dropped out to pursue her dream of becoming a writer. When she was 19, she left Nigeria on a scholarship to Drexel University in Philadelphia. She studied communication at Drexel and earned a degree in communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University. She graduated summa cum laude in 2001. Later that year, she began MFA courses in literature at Johns Hopkins University.
 


Adichie credits Chinua Achebe, Igbo author of Nigerian masterwork Things Fall Apart, with her literary success. She once lived in Achebe’s house and believes his halo surrounded her. After reading his book at 10 years old, she realized that people who looked like her could exist in books. Her desire to write was sparked by his work.


In 2003, Purple Hibiscus was published to wide acclaim. It was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. She was awarded with the Orange Prize in 2007 for her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, about the Biafran War. In 2008, she received a MacArthur Fellowship. A collection of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck, was published in 2009.

She splits her time between the United States and Nigeria, married to a Maryland-based doctor. Her next novel will chronicle the Nigerian immigrant experience in America.