Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria. She studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria then moved to the US to study communications and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University. She gained an MA in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. After initially writing poetry and one play, For Love of Biafra (1998), she had several short stories published in literary journals, winning various competition prizes. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, won the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book), and was shortlisted for the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction. Her second novel is Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), set before and during the Biafran War. It won the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.
Books
Half of a Yellow Sun
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Interest age: 15+
Reading age: 15+
Half of a Yellow Sun is set in Nigeria during the 1960s, at the time of the vicious Nigeria- Biafra war in which more than a million people died and thousands were massacred in cold blood
Purple Hibiscus
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Interest age: 15+
Reading age: 15+
Kambili, the 15-year-old protagonist, her brother Jaja, and their mother Beatrice would seem, from the outside, to have an ideal life under care of her father – the self-made businessman, newspaper proprietor and humble servant of the Catholic Church.
The Thing Around Your Neck
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Interest age: 15+
Reading age: 15+
These beautifully written short stories from former Orange Prize winner, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, feature a range of compelling characters whose personal experiences raise themes of alienation, identity and lov.