Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, a novel set amid the bloody violence of the Biafran war in her native Nigeria, for which she was the first African writer to win the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her latest book is a collection of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck.

From her Q & A with Anna Metcalfe at the Financial Times:

What book changed your life?

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart when I was nine years old. I didn’t realise at the time but I know now it made me understand that I didn’t have to write about white people.

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Who would you like to be stuck in a lift with?

If they were alive: Iris Murdoch, who I find fascinating. And Thomas Sankara, the intriguing president of Burkina Faso.

Read the complete Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue