Nigerian - Writer | September 15, 1977 -
I divide my time between Columbia, Maryland, and Lagos, Nigeria.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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I am drawn, as a reader, to detail-drenched stories about human lives affected as much by the internal as by the external, the kind of fiction that Jane Smiley nicely describes as 'first and foremost about how individuals fit, or don't fit, into their social worlds.'
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I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.
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I ask questions. I watch the world. And what I have discovered is that the parts of my fiction that people most tell me are 'unbelievable' are those that are most closely based on the real, those least diluted by my imagination.
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I would come, many years later, to understand why 'To Kill A Mockingbird' is considered 'an important novel', but when I first read it at 11, I was simply absorbed by the way it evoked the mysteries of childhood, of treasures discovered in trees, and games played with an exotic summer friend.
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Sometimes novels are considered 'important' in the way medicine is - they taste terrible and are difficult to get down your throat, but are good for you.
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Nigerian politics has been, since the military dictatorships, largely non-ideological. Rather than a battle of ideas, it is about who can pump in the most money and buy the most access.
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Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in 'real' African culture, before it was tainted by the West, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed.
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There has always been a strange dissonance between the public and the private in Nigeria.
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Successful fiction does not need to be validated by 'real life'; I cringe whenever a writer is asked how much of a novel is 'real'.
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I find that women... deal with immigration differently. And I'm interested in that.
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I sort of consider myself a Nigerian who spends a lot of time in the U.S.
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