About the Author

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Enugu, Nigeria to Igbo parents. Her father was a Professor of Statistics at the University of Nigeria, located in Nssuka. Her mother also worked there as the university’s first female registrar. For a year and a half, Adichie studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria, where she developed a love for writing while editing for The Compass, a magazine run by the University’s Catholic medical students.

Adichie left for the United States at nineteen years old to study communications at Drexel University for two years. She then moved on to study political science at Eastern Connecticut State University, where wrote for the university journal, the Campus Lantern. During her senior year at Eastern, she began working on her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, which she published in October 2003. The book has received widespread critical acclaim, winning the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in 2005. Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, was published in August 2006. In all of her work, Adichie strives to bring attention to the long-lasting, negative effects of colonialism on African people of different socioeconomic backgrounds. Her novels have inspired many prolific Nigerian authors, such as one of her greatest role models, Chinua Achebe.