58. Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fiction) 307 p.

World Lit Challenge: Nigeria

Kambili, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a strict Catholic father, lives a life without laughter in family’s home in Enugu, Nigeria. Her abusive father controls all aspects of her and her older brother’s lives. It isn’t until they visit their aunt in Nsukka that she and her brother begin to feel free.

I’d read several positive reviews of this book before I bought it, and of course Adichie won the Orange Prize for her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun. Since recommendations of African literature can be hard to find on book blogs, I was especially glad to find this book at my favourite discount bookstore. None of the reviews were exaggerated. Kambili is a good narrator: quiet and observant, reporting even the things she sees but does not understand.

Someone gave my father Half of a Yellow Sun as a gift, which means it won’t be long before I read it. I can hardly wait. After reading some of the quotes on her website, I worship Adichie just a little. I think this one was my favourite:

I think it’s very important for people to know that those men who are scared by women who are accomplished are the kind of men accomplished women don’t want. So it’s nobody’s loss.

Or maybe this:

Have you wondered why reviewers and blurb-writers are quick to reassure readers that a book about Africa (usually one written by a Black African about Black Africans) is NOT JUST AN AFRICAN BOOK BUT IS UNIVERSAL, as well? As if ‘African’ and ‘Universal’ are mutually exclusive. Nobody ever informs the reader that a great English or American novel is universal because the assumption, of course, is that it is.

And the funny thing about that is that quite often great English and American novels aren’t particularly universal, except in the way that anything good written about human emotions and relationships is universal. In an article in the June 8, 2007 issue of The Guardian, Adichie had this to say about America’s perception of “African writers”:

We have a long history of Africa being seen in ways that are not very complimentary, and in America being seen as an African writer comes with baggage that we don’t necessarily care for. Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe Aids. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations. I was told by a professor at Johns Hopkins University that he didn’t believe my first book because it was too familiar to him. In other words, I was writing about middle-class Africans who had cars and who weren’t starving to death, and therefore to him it wasn’t authentically African.

Books read: 58/100 (58%)
Pages read: 17,117/25,000 (68%)
Days passed: 184/365 (50%)

Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, World Lit Challenge