Like a Compass Pointing to Nsukka

The description of Eugene Achike, the wealthy father of the protagonist and narrating voice of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, as an ‘oblate in a grey robe’ pulls him from that first paragraph of the first page of the story and places him in front of you. He does not come alone, and he does not return to those pages. He hauls the rest of the book behind him in the narrating voice of his shy but observant fifteen-year-old daughter, Kambili Achike. And long after you are done reading, you find that his story, as told by Kambili, sticks inscribed to your forehead like the ash he meticulously applies on the people in his very slow line on Ash Wednesday.

THE MANY WONDERS OF PURPLE HIBISCUS

Twenty years ago, in October 2003, Adichie made her debut in the global literary scene with her novel, Purple Hibiscus. Garnering numerous acclaims to its name almost instantly—with an endorsement from The Baltimore Sun which now sits on the cover of the book referring to it as ‘one of the best novels to come out of Africa in years’—Purple Hibiscus placed Adichie as a leading voice in the global literary space. It made the 2004 Booker Prize longlist and the 2004 Orange Prize shortlist. It also won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in 2004; the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Africa) in 2005; the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Overall) in 2005; and the One Maryland One Book selection in 2017. It has since been translated into 28 different languages and continues to be a ‘fan-favourite’.

In Nigeria and other African countries like Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia, Purple Hibiscus reached new heights of fame among a new demographic after it was included as one of two African prose texts in the West African Examination Council 2011–2015 syllabus for Secondary School Literature. In these four years, every teenager who studied Literature in a secondary school in any of these countries was required to read this Adichie’s novel. On one hand, perhaps, this may have increased the rate at which the book was pirated across West Africa. On the other hand, it also gave Adichie a readership and followership far beyond any of her contemporaries.