The Imaginist

In an ELLE India exclusive, author extraordinaire Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks to Supriya Dravid about storytelling spirits, her scandalous cooking habits and endless curiosity with people’s lives.

- Supriya Dravid

It was almost instinctual that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and I started talking about our daughters when we met. They are the same age: two-and-a-half. Maybe it was because I looked a little frazzled when I went to receive her for our shoot on a blisteringly hot July day in London. I had just gotten off a strange conversation with my mother a few minutes ago. She had called to say that my daughter had stubbornly refused to wear clothes all day. When I regaled Chimamanda with this story, she laughed out loud. And when she started talking about her own daughter, her nanny travails (let’s not go there) and her family (her beloved 17-year-old niece, who manages her Instagram account, and sister-in-law, both of whom accompanied her on the day of our shoot), it was easy to forget her reigning otherworldly, multigenerational presence that transcends the world of literature and high fashion. Chimamanda, as she likes to be called, wears her fame with unhurried ease and generosity. “I’ve learnt that to be famous is fundamentally to be unknown by a large number of people. You have motivations projected on you that are so far from the truth as to be absurd. And your humanity is very often overlooked,” she says. Irreverently witty, curious about our stories, and intuitive about our negotiation with the world, Chimamanda is a writer who is personal in her approach to her craft. And it is her intimacy and psychological dexterity that allow her to command the position she does.