Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Enugu, Nigeria, in 1977, the fifth of six children, and grew up in the university town of Nsukka. Reading Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart as a girl was a turning point for her. After a period studying medicine in Nsukka she moved to the United States in 1997. She earned a degree in communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University, then a master's in creative writing at Johns Hopkins, and she also studied African history at Yale.
Her fiction is realist and built around people. She writes about family, religion, class, migration and the long aftermath of Nigeria's civil war. Purple Hibiscus (2003) follows a teenage girl in a wealthy household ruled by a fanatically devout father. Americanah (2013) moves between Nigeria and the United States. Dream Count (2025) tells the stories of four women and is her first novel in twelve years. She has also published the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck and the essay We Should All Be Feminists.
Half of a Yellow Sun won the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction in 2007. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and in 2020 the Women's Prize for Fiction named it its Winner of Winners for the prize's 25th anniversary. Americanah later won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Adichie is also a MacArthur Fellow. Biyi Bandele directed a film of Half of a Yellow Sun in 2013.
Start with Half of a Yellow Sun. It follows Ugwu, a village boy who works in a professor's house, and the sisters Olanna and Kainene as the Biafran war reaches their lives. It is her most celebrated novel, and it shows how she mixes intimate domestic scenes with history. Readers who want something set in the present day can go on to Americanah.
