CNN’s ‘African Voices’ Profiles Nigerian Prolific Writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie…As she talks about her works, inspirations and impact on Nigeria

African Voices, a weekly show that examines the diversity, dynamism and global influence of Africa’s people and culture; and highlights Africa’s most engaging personalities within and in the Diaspora will be featuring Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, one of Nigeria’s most prolific writers.

Cheerfully pioneering the way for a new wave of Nigerian writers, renowned Nigerian Author, Adichie, narrates her award winning novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, as it tells a human story of a brutal and controversial civil war which took place in her homeland, Nigeria, in the late 60’s.

Highly influenced by her Mother, Ifeoma Adichie, who became the first female Registrar of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Adichie is bold, vivacious, candid; a story teller living her truth. And that fulfilment translates into Award winning novels.

Describing her development as a writer, between her books Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and Americana, Adichie says ‘they are such different books, and I think I wrote them from very different places in my life, emotionally.’

According to her ‘For Purple Hibiscus, I was very homesick, I was in the US. Suddenly I was romantisizing the hibiscus flowers in our front yard and I wrote this book, about missing home, nostalgia. Half of a Yellow Sun was so different. I knew I was writing about this very intense, contested history and I did so much research, and I cried a lot when I was writing it. My grandfathers died in Biafra, and here I was kind of mining the pain of my family.’

‘Then Americana, I laughed a lot writing it. It’s just very different, I don’t so much see it as a kind of linear progression – the books. It’s sort of more just like occupying different parallel spaces,’ Adichie concluded.

From uncovering historical atrocities to playing a role in shaping her country, Nigeria’s future, Adichie has also considered a career in politics.

Show airs Saturday 3:30pm; Sunday at 9:00am and 6:30pm; Monday 10:30am and 5:30pm; and Tuesday 5:30am.