"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 is very much the 21st-century daughter of that other great Igbo novelist, Chinua Achebe." - The Washington Post Book World "One of the best novels to come out of Africa in years."- The Baltimore Sun When a widowed aunt takes an interest in Kambili, her family begins to unravel and re-form itself in unpredictable ways. No one in Papa's ancestral village, where he is titled "Omelora" (One Who Does For the Community), knows why Kambili¹s brother cannot move one of his fingers, nor why her mother keeps losing her pregnancies.
Fifteen-year-old Kambili is the dutiful and self-effacing daughter of a rich man, a religious fanatic and domestic tyrant whose public image is of a politically courageous newspaper publisher and philanthropist. But within a few pages, these details, however vividly rendered, melt into the background of a larger, more compelling story of a joyless family. Purple Hibiscus, Nigerian-born writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's debut, begins like many novels set in regions considered exotic by the western reader: the politics, climate, social customs, and, above all, food of Nigeria (balls of fufu rolled between the fingers, okpa bought from roadside vendors) unfold like the purple hibiscus of the title, rare and fascinating.
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