epub | 1.85 MB | English | Isbn:9780007383696 | Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Year: 2012

Description:

Fifteen-year-old Kambili's world is circumscribed by the high walls and frangipani trees of her family compound. Her wealthy Catholic father, under whose shadow Kambili lives, while generous and politically active in the community, is repressive and fanatically religious at home.

When Nigeria begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili's father sends her and her brother away to stay with their aunt, a University professor, whose house is noisy and full of laughter. There, Kambili and her brother discover a life and love beyond the confines of their father's authority. The visit will lift the silence from their world and, in time, give rise to devotion and defiance that reveal themselves in profound and unexpected ways. This is a book about the promise of freedom; about the blurred lines between childhood and adulthood, between love and hatred, between the old gods and the new.

Review

"A sensitive and touching story of a child exposed too early to religious intolerance and the uglier side of the Nigerian state." J.M. Coetzee

"A breathtaking debut...[Adichie] is very much the 21st-century daughter of that other great Igbo novelist, Chinua Achebe." The Washington Post Book World

"Remarkably original...at once seductive, tender and true." Jason Cowley, *The Times

"Adichie's understanding of a young girl's heart is so acute that her story ultimately rises above its setting and makes her little part of Nigeria seem as close and vivid as Eudora Welty's Mississippi." The Boston Globe*

About the Author

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into 30 languages and has appeared in various publications, including The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003, The New Yorker, Granta, the Financial Times and Zoetrope. Her novel Half of a Yellow Sun won the Orange Broadband Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her most recent book, The Thing Around Your Neck, was a national bestseller. She divides her time between the United States and Nigeria. The author lives in United States/Nigeria.

Category:Historical African Fiction, Black & African American Literary Fiction, Education & Reference