‘I believe I was born with this gift to tell stories'

One of the most highly regarded writers and thinkers of a generation, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has blazed a new trail for women. She talks to Adriana Ferreira Silva about equality, identity – and still answering to her mum

With her three-year-old daughter in tow, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie arrives at today’s photoshoot wearing a headscarf, black leggings, black top and draped in an elegant silk Zara cover-up. She’s careful not to mention her toddler’s name when she introduces her [Adichie is fiercely protective of her child’s privacy], but openly and lovingly calls her ‘Bubu’ and says she ‘looks just like her father’. Dad is the author’s husband of ten years, Ivara Esege, a doctor at the prestigious University of Maryland Medical Center. He’s a tall, handsome, polite man who drops into the Washington DCbased studio a few hours later to take their daughter home. In the meantime, the writer, who divides her time between the US and Lagos, is currently fighting offfatigue and hunger by snacking on chocolate, while her playlist of Nigerian music gives the studio a chilled vibe.

Adichie was born in Nigeria and raised on the campus of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where her father, James Nwoye Adichie, worked as a professor of statistics and her mother, Grace Ifeoma, was the university’s first female registrar. The fifth of six siblings, she began her literary career at the tender age of ten. ‘At that age, I already said that I was a writer, because I was making my little books,’ she says. ‘I don’t come from a culture that views being an author as a major ambition, I didn’t ask myself if I was or wasn’t a writer. I thought I was and that was it.’

When I tell her that Purple Hibiscus, Adichie’s first novel about a religious father, who treats his children and wife with extreme violence, really moved me, she asks, ‘Did you suffer reading the book? It makes me very happy when somebody tells me they read my book and cried. Or laughed.’