Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an award-winning Nigerian author of fiction, who has attained global recognition for her many works of literature. She has become one of the most widely known and celebrated African authors, thanks to her best-known works such as Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, and We Should All be Feminists.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in 1977 in the southeastern Nigerian city of Enugu. Adichie's mother was a professor of statistics, while her father was a professor of statistics and Igbo traditionalist. Adichie was educated both in Nigeria and the United States, beginning her studies at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, before studying at Drexel University in Philadelphia and the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars Program.

Adichie first wrote her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, when she was in her mid-twenties, for which she would be awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book. Her second novel, the more globally acclaimed Half of a Yellow Sun, then won the Orange Prize for Fiction. These two novels became bestsellers, acquired wide acclaim and were later adapted into movies.

Adichie's third and fourth novels, The Thing Around Your Neck and Americanah respectively, both also garnered huge popularity amongst readers, bringing Adichie to an even greater international audience. Her short story collections, The Headstrong Historian and The Thing Around Your Neck, were significant, as they marked Adichie's continued exploration of the Nigerian experience in the larger context of global experience.

The success of these works has been followed by a TED talk given by Adichie entitled We Should All Be Feminists, which has since grown into a full book and subsequently a call-to-action for many all over the world. Adichie has been highly vocal and visible on the contemporary feminist movement, and her works have drawn influence from her engagements in feminism and activism.

Outside of her writing accolades, Adichie has also won a MacArthur Fellowship "Genius Grant" and was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters from Johns Hopkins University. She has been made a knight of the National Order of Niger, a member of American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

In her writing, Adichie has developed an acclaimed style, conceptually connecting larger ideas with the human experience to examine pressing themes such as race, identity and gender. Through subtle details, Adichie’s narratives help readers to gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of human experience, while posing questions of how we can strive to be kind to each other in spite of our differences.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the most celebrated modern authors, and her impact in literature and advocacy has reach far and wide. Awarded with numerous distinctions and accolades, Adichie’s literary work has set her as an outspoken advocate for gender equality and a leader in the development of literature written by Africans for an international audience.