Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Straddling Continents

By Edward Nawotka on Publishing Perspectives.

TORONTO:

"In the West we have constructed a narrative where African wars and poverty are meaningless, with no real political or historical context, which suggests misery is this atavistic thing," says Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. "But what gets forgotten is at the same time all this is happening, people are falling in love, people are still living their lives. That is what I'm trying to do with my fiction, to tell the stories with a bit of complexity, with balance. There needs to be balance." Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has become, perhaps reluctantly, the "it" girl of African literature.(click here to read the rest of the article)

WATCH: The author speak at the 2008 Christopher Okigbo International Conference at Harvard University.

BECOME: The latest of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi's more than 6,000 fans on FacebookREAD: The story "Cell One" which appears in The Thing Around Your NeckThe Thing Around Your Neck has already been published in the UK, US, Canada and other countries around the world. It will be published in Nigeria in July by Farafina.