Purple Hibiscus

was in my intense period of God searching. I read the writings of St Augustine and fat books about Church history. I was always asking questions. I wanted to know why some people had car accidents and some didn’t. I wanted to capture God in a bottle.’
    In Eugene Achike – or Papa – Adichie created a character who tries to prove how Christian he is by condemning his past. ‘This is very much a theme in Achebe’s
Things Fall Apart
and
Arrow of God
. I wanted to write the modern take. I wanted Papa to be a man who did horrible things but who, ultimately,wasn’t a monster. Unless he was complex it would be easy to dismiss him. There are lots of people who are kind and generous and thoughtful but, in the name of religion, do all sorts of awful things.’
    Now Adichie is working on her next novel,
Half of a Yellow Sun
, set during the civil war of 1967-70. She is planning to move back to Nigeria, with a possible semester of teaching in America each year. ‘I’m definitely going to live in Nigeria,’ she says. ‘I belong there and the reason I care about it is that I belong. It’s very important for me to matter in Nigeria, to make some sort of difference. I want people back home to read my books, for women to feel empowered by them, and for people to be inspired to be writers.’ This does not seem an unrealistic ambition. It is easy to imagine that one day it will be Adichie who is making a young Nigerian writer’s heart leap with an e-mail congratulating them on their work. She knows how good that feels.
LIFE
at a Glance
BORN
    September 1977, in Abba, Anambra State, Nigeria.
EDUCATED
    University Primary School, Nsukka; University Secondary School, Nsukka; Eastern Connecticut State University (BS summa cum laude, Communication); Johns Hopkins University (MA, Creative Writing).
FAMILY
    Adichie is the fifth of six children. She has two older sisters, two older brothers, and a younger brother. At the age of 19 she moved to the United States to live with her eldest sister, Ijeoma, who has become as much a friend as sister.
CAREER
    While studying for her Creative Writing masters degree, from which she graduated in 2004, Adichie had a teaching assistant post in Expository Writing at the university. Over the past few years she has written extensively. Besides
Purple Hibiscus
, she has had short stories published in anthologies as well as in British and American journals.
AWARDS AND PRIZES
    Purple Hibiscus
was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2004, and shortlisted for the Orange Prize 2004. It also received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award 2004. Her short story ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ won the PEN/David Wong shortstory award 2003.
PREVIOUS WORKS
    ‘Transition to Glory’, cited as Distinguished Story, in Lorrie Moore (ed.),
The Best American Short Stories, 2004
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).
    ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’, in David Eggers (ed.),
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).
    ‘American Embassy’, in Laura Furman (ed.),
Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards 2003
(New York: Anchor Books, 2003).
    ‘Women Here Drive Buses’, in Tracy Price-Thompson and Taressa Stovall (eds),
Proverbs for the People
, an anthology of African-American fiction (New York: Kensington, 2003).
Top Ten
    Favourite Books
    1. Arrow of God
    Chinua Achebe
    2. Woman at Point Zero
    Nawal El Saadawi
    3. The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
    Ayi Kwei Armah
    4. Efuru
    Flora Nwapa
    5. Reef
    Romesh Gunesekera
    6. Madame Bovary
    Gustave Flaubert
    7. The Bluest Eye
    Toni Morrison
    8. Reading in the Dark
    Seamus Deane
    9. A Strange and Sublime Address
    Amit Chaudhuri
    10. One Hundred Years of Solitude
    Gabriel Garcia Marquez

About the book
A Critical Eye
    ‘ PURPLE HIBISCUS
IS one of the finest debut novels of recent years, a complex and compelling account of a 15-year-old girl’s sexual awakening and religious oppression, set against a backdrop of domestic violence and an incipient military coup in Nigeria,’ says Alison Roberts in the Evening Standard. ‘It is a novel as revealing and sensitive as Arundhati Roy’s
The God of Small Things
, and as punchy and characterful as Monica Ali’s
Brick Lane.&rsquo
;
    The Glasgow Herald’s Laurence Wareing was blown away by Adichie’s ‘breathtaking confidence’ in echoing Chinua Achebe’s famous title
Things Fall Apart
in her opening sentence. Indeed, she takes up many of Achebe’s themes and, like him, ‘eschews black and white answers’.