Purple Hibiscus

with a ribbon. I remember that my brother was not interested in the test.
    I stare at the writing on that board, at the faded chalk. I cannot believe that nobody ever wiped those words. I am suddenly, achingly, nostalgic for a time past, for the ten-year-old me who was satisfied with the present, who was not bewilderingly confronted by change. I wonder if I should wipe the board, and finally, I decide not to. I leave it as it is.
    © Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2003
    This essay was first published in the American literary magazine
Speakeasy
.

Read on
Have you read?
    Other books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    Half of a Yellow Sun
    WINNER OF THE ORANGE BROADBAND PRIZE FOR FICTION
    In the civil war-blighted Nigeria of the 1960s three lives intersect. Ugwu, a boy from a poor village works as houseboy to a university lecturer. Olanna, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover the professor. The third is Richard, a shy Englishman besotted with Olanna’s enigmatic sister. When the shocking savagery of the war engulfs them their loyalties are severely tested as they are pulled apart and thrown together in ways that none of them imagined…
    ‘Heartbreaking, funny, exquisitely written and, without doubt, a literary masterpiece and a classic’
    Daily Mail
    The Thing Around Your Neck
    The Thing Around Your Neck
is a dazzling collection of twelve short stories, in which Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie turns her penetrating eye on the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Nigeria and the West. Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow and longing, this collection is a resounding confirmation of her prodigious storytelling powers.
    ‘She makes storytelling seem as easy as birdsong’ JANE SHILLING ,
Daily Telegraph
If You Loved This, You Might Like…
    Things Fall Apart
    ChinuaAchebe
    Published in 1958, this unsentimental portrait of traditional village culture in Nigeria is the seminal African novel published in English.
    Nervous Conditions
    Tsitsi Dangeremgba
    Set in colonial Rhodesia during the 1960s, this is the coming of age of a teenage girl and her relationship with her British-educated cousin.
    Joys of Motherhood
    Buchi Emecheta
    This story of a young mother’s struggles in 1950s Lagos is a commentary on polygamy, patriarchy, and women’s changing roles in urban Nigeria.
    Disgrace
    J. M. Coetzee
    Set in post-apartheid South Africa, this Booker Prize-winning novel is about a man and his daughter and their personal and political responses to the new South Africa.
    In the Heart of the Country
    J. M. Coetzee
    The story of a lonely sheep farmer in colonial South Africa who seeks private salvation in the arms of a black concubine, while his daughter fantasizes about murdering both of them.
    The Grass is Singing
    Doris Lessing
    Set in Rhodesia, this is the story of Dick, a failed white farmer, and his wife, Mary, who seeks solace in the arms of the houseboy.
    Annie John
    Jamaica Kincaid
    Growing up on Antigua should be a sojourn in paradise for Annie John. But adolescence leads the headstrong girl into open rebellions and secret discoveries, which eventually wrench her away from her island home.
    A Grain of Wheat
    Ngugi wa Thiong’o
    This novel portrays several characters in a village whose intertwined lives are transformed by the 1952–60 Emergency in Kenya.
    Petals of Blood
    Ngugi wa Thiong’o
    This political novel and satire, which centres on a murder in a Kenyan village, caused great controversy when it was published in 1977.

Also By The Author
Half of a Yellow Sun
The Thing Around Your Neck

Praise
    From the reviews of
Purple Hibiscus
:
    ‘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…It is a novel as revealing as Arundhati Roy’s
The God of Small Things
, and as punchy and characterful as Monica Ali’s
Brick Lane
’
    Evening Standard
    ‘Perceptive characterisation and an evocative portrayal of a fast-changing country mark this Orange-shortlisted novel out from the crowd’
    Guardian
    ‘Assured and evocative, it touches on domestic violence and religious fundamentalism with subtlety and sensitivity. Surely a tale for our times’
    Daily Mail
    ‘With writing marked by infinite wisdom and heart-breaking generosity, Adichie draws the African struggle for a modern identity into the heart of family life…Balanced yet passionate, hers is an