The Successful

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 

The prolific writer was born on 15^th of September, 1977. She is a Nigerian writer of novels, short stories and nonfiction.

In 2008, Chimamanda Adichie was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant. She was also described in the Times Literary Supplement as “the most prominent” of a “procession of critically acclaimed Anglophone authors (who) is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature”.

Chimamanda Adichie was born in the city of Enugu in Nigeria. She is the fifth of six children in an Igbo family from the university town of Nsukka in Enugu state.

She studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for a year and the half. Chimamanda, during this period, edited The Compass, a magazine run by the university’s Catholic medical students.

Adichie left Nigeria at the age of 19, for the United States, to study communications and political science at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She was later transferred to Eastern Connecticut State University, where she received a bachelor’s degree.

In 2003, Adiche completed a master’s degree in creative writing at John Hopkins University.

Chimamanda Adichie has several collections under her name. In 2003, her first novel, Purple Hibiscus  received wide acclaim and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2004. She was also awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (2005).

Her third book, The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), is a collection of 12 stories that explore the relationships between men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States.

In 2013, her third novel was an exploration of a young Nigerian encountering race in America. It was selected by the New York Times as one of the “ten best books in 2013”.

In April 2014, she was named as one of 39 writers aged under 40 in the Hay Festival and Rainbow Book Club project Africa, celebrating Port Harcourt UNESCO World Book Capital 2014.

In April 2017, it was announced that Adichie had been elected into the 237^th class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the highest honours for intellectuals in the United States, as one of 228 new members to be inducted on 7 October 2017.

Her most recent book was published in March 2017 entitled Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions.

                                                     Source: Wikipedia.