Synopses & Reviews
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
"One of the best novels to come out of Africa in years." The Baltimore Sun
Review
"One of the best novels to come out of Africa in years." The Baltimore Sun
Review
"The author's straightforward prose captures the tragic riddle of a man who has made an unquestionably positive contribution to the lives of strangers while abandoning the needs of those who are closest to him." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"A breathtaking debut...[Adichie] is very much the 21st-century daughter of that other great Igbo novelist, Chinua Achebe." The Washington Post Book World
Review
"At once the portrait of a country and a family, of terrible choices and the tremulous pleasure of an odd, rare purple hibiscus blooming amid a conforming sea of red ones." San Francisco Chronicle
Synopsis
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.
About the Author
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria, where she attended medical school for two years at the University of Nigeria before coming to the United States. A 2003 O. Henry Prize winner, Adichie was shortlisted for the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing. Her work has been selected by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and the BBC Short Story Awards, and has appeared in various literary publications, including Zoetrope and the Iowa Review. She now divides her time between the U.S. and Nigeria.
Reading Group Guide
1. What is the emotional atmosphere in Kambilis home? What effect does this have on Kambili and Jaja? Why is their father so strict?
2. When Kambili visits Aunty Ifeoma, she is immediately struck by how much laughter fills the house. Why is it so surprising to her to hear people speak, laugh, and argue so freely? How does she manage to regain her own ability to speak, and, most importantly, to laugh?
3. When Kambili hears Amaka weeping after her grandfathers death, Kambili thinks: “She had not learned the art of silent crying. She had not needed to” [p. 185]. What does this passage suggest about the differences between Amaka and Kambili? In what other ways are Aunty Ifeomas children—Amaka, Obiora, and Chima—different from Kambili and Jaja?
4. Amaka says, “Uncle Eugene is not a bad man,
really. . . . People have problems, people make mistakes” [p. 251]. Is he in fact a “bad man”? Why does he violently abuse his wife and children? What good deeds does he perform? How can his generosity and political integrity coexist with his religious intolerance?
5. In what ways are Aunty Ifeoma and Eugene different from one another? How does each character approach life? How do they differ in their religious views? Why is Ifeoma so much happier even though she is poor and her brother is rich?
6. Eugene boasts that his Kambili and Jaja are “not like those loud children people are raising these days, with no home training and no fear of God”; to which Ade Coker replies: “Imagine what the Standard would be if we were all quiet” [p. 58]. Why is quiet obedience a questionable virtue in a country where the truth needs to be spoken? In what ways is the refusal to be quiet dangerous?
7. What kind of man is Papa-Nnukwu? What are his most appealing qualities? What do the things he prays for say about his character? Why has his son disowned him so completely?
8. What are the ironies involved in Eugene loving God the Father and Jesus the Son, but despising his own father and abusing his own son?
9. Why does Kambilis mother keep returning to her husband, even after he beats her so badly that he causes a miscarriage, and even after he nearly kills Kambili? How does she justify her husbands behavior? How should she be judged for poisoning her husband?
10. How does Father Amadi bring Kambili to life? Why is her relationship with him so important to her sense of herself?
11. Jaja questions why Jesus had to be sacrificed, “Why did He have to murder his own son so we would be saved? Why didnt He just go ahead and save us?” [p. 289] And yet, Jaja sacrifices himself to save his mother from prison. Why does he do this? Should this be understood as a Christian sacrifice or a simple act of compassion and bravery?
12. After Aunty Ifeoma moves her family to the United States, Amaka writes, “there has never been a power outage and hot water runs from a tap, but we dont laugh anymore . . . because we no longer have the time to laugh, because we dont even see one another” [p. 301]. What does this passage suggest about the essential difference between American culture and African culture?
13. What does the novel as a whole say about the nature of religion? About the relationship between belief and behavior?
14. What does Purple Hibiscus reveal about life in Nigeria? How are Nigerians similar to Americans? In what significant ways are they different? How do Americans regard Nigerians in the novel?
15. Why does Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie end the novel with an image of rain clouds? What are the implications of Kambili feeling that the clouds hung so low she “could reach out and squeeze the moisture from them”? What is the meaning of the novels very simple final sentence: “The new rains will come down soon”?
ORANGE PRIZE FINALIST
A San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year
“One of the best novels to come out of Africa in years.” —The Baltimore Sun
The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your groups discussion of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichies extraordinary and moving debut novel Purple Hibiscus.
Author Q&A
Q: PURPLE HIBISCUS is your first novel. What inspired you to write this book?A: It came about organically and slowly; it was sparked by a mélange of things: my homesickness after first arriving in America to attend college (and the way I stubbornly romanticized my memories so that everything became fragrant—rain, sand, insects, grass!), my interest in religion, the way history lives with us, my fascination with the kind of sweet-sour melancholy in some of my favorite books, Nigerian politics and how it trickles down to the personal. By the way, it isn’t the first novel I wrote. There are manuscripts languishing in dusty drawers which were poorly conceived, to put it kindly.
Q: Although PURPLE HIBISCUS is not autobiographical, how much of your protagonist, Kambili, do you see in yourself?
A: Very little. Creating her as she is was very conscious. I was aware that I was dealing with huge, complex issues—religion, politics, history—that are easy to lapse into polemics about, and so I wanted a narrator who would be able to tell the story as unobtrusively as possible. Kambili fitted well. She is not only young and sensitive, but she is also traumatized and that lends a kind of detachment to her telling. She is voiceless in a way that I, thank Heavens, am not, but I think that hushed quality of hers serves this particular story well. I do sometimes see the careful way she observes her world in myself. But I generally never model a major character after myself. I think that would stifle the creative spark; I need to be able to see my characters as being apart from me, creations that I can observe, because only then can I let them grow and free them to take risks and free myself to let them take those risks.
Q: Was there an Aunty Ifeoma figure in your own adolescence, someone who similarly opened your mind to the world of books and written expression?
A: There wasn’t one single figure, no. My parents, the university town where I grew up, my friends, my school, all opened my world to books.
Q: Because of your Igbo heritage, your work is said to have roots in the writings of Chinua Achebe. Beyond your shared Nigerian homeland, what similarities do you find in your writing?
A: I feel terribly honored to be linked to Achebe! His work has inspired me more than any other writer’s, but at the same time I don’t think my writing has its ‘roots’ in his. However, we seem to care about similar things, as do must thinking Igbo people I know. (Of course I am comparing a single novel to his incredible body of work.) We are both aware of how the legacy of colonialism has insidiously trickled down into ordinary Nigerian lives. We both celebrate Igbo culture in its magnificent ordinariness. We both portray the complexities of Christianity in Nigeria. We are both impatient with the inept leadership in Nigeria and with the way we Nigerians excuse corruption and never demand the best of ourselves and our leaders.
Q: PURPLE HIBISCUS offers not only a fascinating picture of Nigeria under the Abacha junta years, but also a buffet of traditional Nigerian dishes. What inspired you to make food such a prominent aspect of the story and is there a specific Nigerian dish you miss most when you are away from home? Is there a recipe you might want to share?
A: A meld of both the Abacha and Babangida juntas, really. Well, first because I love good food—I’m very keen on Nigerian and Indian! But more practically because I think food is a good way of introducing fiction readers to a different world, that it is the kind of detail that authenticates ‘place’ in fiction. I eat quite a bit of Nigerian food when I am in the U. S. thanks to African markets. But because I have been ‘americanized’ a little, I try to make them ‘healthier,’ and so, for example, I use very little palm oil when I make moi-moi, a delicious steam-cooked ‘cake’ of black-eyed peas.
Q: If you were to send a message to young African writers just starting out, what would it be?
A: Don’t apologize in your writing. And don’t think about your parents or uncles or aunts as you write. I find that a lot of African writing has an apologetic worldview, as if it were saying to the West—I am sorry I come from the impenetrable Dark Continent, as if the writers have internalized the idea that they are somehow unworthy. I think that makes for not only bad writing but it also comes across as inauthentic. And I also think that because we have such a strong sense of family, the thought of family members reading our work can make us censor ourselves.
Q: What’s next for you as a writer? Are you working on another novel?
A: Yes. It’s set in the sixties, before and during the Nigeria-Biafra war, but it is a story of ordinary people and what happens to them before and during the war.