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Chronicles of Greatness (15) Chimamanda Adichie
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CHIMAMANDA ADICHIE (1977 – )
"People tend to think, that if a book supports your own prejudices, it's great literature. It's not. As a writer, you have to keep a distance to your subject..."
-Chimamanda Adichie
Chimamanda Adichie was born 15th September, 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria. She is the fifth child of six children by her parents. Her parents are Igbo (the Eastern part of Nigeria). She grew up in a house where late Chinua Achebe used to stay in Nsukka. When she was a child, she came across and read Chinua' Achebe's “Things fall apart” which turned her life around. She was soon to publish her own novels.
Her father was the first Nigerian Professor of Statistics. He worked at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He later became the Vice Chancellor of the same University. Her mother was the first female registrar at the same University.
Chimamanda finished her secondary education at the University of Nigeria's Secondary school with several academic awards.
She studied medicine and pharmacy at the same University for 18months. Within these 18months, she edited The Compass, a Nigerian magazine by the Catholic medical students of the same institution.
At 19 years, Chimamanda left for the United States with a scholarship to study communication at Drexel University Philadelphia for two years. She went ahead to pursue another degree in communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University.
In 2001, she completed her master's degree in Creative Writing at John Hopkins University Baltimore.
In 2003, She published Purple Hibiscus.
In 2004, Purple Hibiscus was shortlisted for the Orange Fiction prize and in 2005, the book won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (2005).
In August 2006, her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun was published in United Kingdom. This novel was a result of four years of research and writing. In addition, the novel was written based on her parent's experience in the Nigerian Biafra war.
In September, 2006, the same novel was published in the United States. It has also been published in Nigeria and turned to a movie in 2013.
In 2008, she earned an MA in African Studies from Yale University in 2008. That same year, she received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
In 2009, she published The Thing around Your Neck, her collection of short stories, in the United Kingdom. The same book was published in the United States recently.
She has revealed that her next literary work will be on immigrant experience in the United States.
Chimamanda is married. She shares her time between Nigeria and United States.
She has recently been awarded a 2011-2012 fellow
Most Recent Books Published: Americanah (2013), We should all be Feminists (2014)
Awards: The New Yorker's '20 Under 40', 2010, 2013 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize (fiction category), for Americanah, Listed among the 'Ten Best Books of 2013', New York Times Book Review, for Americanah, Listed among the 'Top Ten Books of 2013', BBC, for Americanah, Listed among the '100 Most Influential Africans 2013', New African, Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award 2013 (fiction category), for Americanah, Listed among the 'Leading Women of 2014' by CNN
Outstanding Attributes: Passion, Zeal and Determination
Supporting Attributes: Boldness and Focus
Compiled from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. (2015). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1018376/Chimamanda-Ngozi-Adichie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimamanda_Ngozi_Adichie
And other Online materials and interviews with Chimamanda Adichie.
Copyright © 2015 [Adebola A. Ayoade]. All Rights Reserved.