Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I’m still playing catch-up with Shiny New Books reviews – and so onto my review of Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Definitely my most coveted books of 2016 are these reprints. And the book was excellent too, of course! The full review is here, and below is the opening of it…

It might seem strange to include a novel in the reprints section that is only 13 years old – but Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has recently had all of her books to date reprinted by 4th Estate with beautiful African prints for the covers, and it seemed like an excellent opportunity to acquaint myself with her first novel: Purple Hibiscus.

Everybody else got on the Adichie train years ago, but I only encountered her earlier in 2016 while reading Americanah. While her most recent novel is more ambitious and broader in scope than Purple Hibiscus, there are many of the same hallmarks in her debut – perhaps primarily the confident, sensitive storytelling.