Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

@chimamandana

Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery
Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery
John Gregory Brown | 1994 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
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"I have always been drawn to fiction that is written in sublime language and looks at the world through a romantic-realist lens, and this book does just that. It is the story of a White family in New Orleans, in the American South, and their Black servant; a story of race and love and family and dreams. It is filled with longing, melancholy and nostalgia, and it is so atmospheric, so hauntingly described, that the reader never quite emerges from the book."

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Fathers and Sons
Fathers and Sons
Ivan Turgenev, Peter Carson | 2016 | Fiction & Poetry
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"Turgenev said that he could not ‘sweeten his characters with syrup,’ that he had to tell the truth, even at the expense of his own sympathies. I loved this book as a teenager and have never forgotten how completely absorbed I was by Turgenev’s wonderfully evocative world."

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Arrow of God
Arrow of God
Chinua Achebe | 2010 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
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"Before I read Achebe as a child in Nigeria, I read only foreign children’s books, and so I wrote about the same things I was reading – all my characters were White and the stories were set in England or a generic Westernised country. I had not read books that featured people like me, so I thought that books couldn’t include people like me. Until I discovered Achebe. I didn’t realise it at the time, of course – I was too young to be consciously aware of that sort of thing – but later I would realise that reading Achebe was a turning point. It made me see that it was, in fact, possible for people of colour to exist within literature. Arrow of God has remained one of my favourite novels. Set in 1920s Igboland, it tells the story of a remarkable priest, Ezeulu, and a British administrator, and the ways in which colonialism brought not only political but cultural changes. It is funny and absorbing, moving and beautiful. I love this book."

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The Color Purple
The Color Purple
Alice Walker | 2014 | Fiction & Poetry
8.5 (24 Ratings)
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"I admired the fierce honesty in the single-mindedly feminist world-view of this book. It breaks many of the ‘rules’ of fiction. Walker comes close to painting all the men in a simplistic shade of ‘bad,’ although she attempts to give the nameless husband of Celie some redemption in the end. But the reader senses that a greater truth is at stake; that this was a story that needed to be told. I liked how Celie becomes strong with the love of Shug. And how Sofia is amazingly resilient but is punished for sassing the mayor, and later has to go and work for the mayor’s wife. I applauded Celie’s sexual awakening. And, most of all, I liked the idea that God gets angry if we walk past a field with the colour purple and don’t notice it."

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Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals
Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals
Ahmadou Kourouma | 2001 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry, History & Politics
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"This is a humourous, irreverent and unabashedly political novel; it is an enraged lament about post-colonial Africa and how the leaders who inherited supposedly independent countries went on to fail their citizens. Some leaders are closely modelled on real characters – Mobutu of Zaire and Lumumba of the Congo are impossible to miss. The simplified summary of Kourouma: Colonialism has spawned monsters in the name of African leaders, and the West is the creator of these Frankensteins. The narrative is complex. There is a wonderfully oral quality to the telling, and many stories and anecdotes are laugh-aloud funny. Kourouma insists – and this underlies the narrative – that African dictators are mostly guided by their belief in the traditional, the supernatural, and that Islam or Christianity are mere window-dressing. This is a good example of an intelligent and important book that’s also genuinely interesting."

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