This review is provided by bookgroup.info.
Purple Hibiscus is the story of a fifteen-year-old Nigerian girl, Kambili, and describes her life under the constraints of her father's strict regime. When life in the city becomes dangerous during a military coup, she is sent away to stay with her aunt where she eventually finds love and happiness.
Written from Kambili's point of view, it is a powerful story that is remarkable for the subtlety of the telling. Papa, a newspaper owner committed to reporting the truth about state corruption, revered by the community for his generosity, is in many ways a monstrous figure. At home he is authoritarian and bullying, narrow-minded and intolerant, yet he is motivated by profound religious beliefs. And, although his love for them is beyond doubt, his cruelty to his family in order to keep them on the path of righteousness is chilling.
The delicacy of the relationship between father and daughter is especially painful: locked to Kambili's fear of her father is an unquestioning love and belief. She describes how she would "snuggle into Papa's arms when harmattan thunderstorms raged outside, flinging mangoes against the window netting and making the electric wire hit each other and spark bright orange flames. Papa would lodge me between his knees or wrap me in the cream blanket that smelled of safety." And even after she finally breaks away from the security of his violence and begins to become independent, she remains devoted to him.
Like most Nigerian novels, Purple Hibiscus necessarily deals with the tension between Catholicism and traditional religion, but Ngozi Adichie also tackles the more recent problems associated with an African state emerging, as Kambili does, from the destructive legacy of a paternalist power.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has won the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize First Best Book award for Purple Hibiscus. Welcome to another wonderful Nigerian writer.
The Lovereading view...
A powerful and compelling coming of age novel of a family, a faith and a country, all in an awful turmoil. It has been highly rated by reviewers
Head to our 'Black Lit Matters' list to find more must-read novels by black writers.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
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**DREAM COUNT, the searing new bestselling novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is out now!**
A haunting tale of an Africa and an adolescence undergoing tremendous changes from the talented bestseller and award-winning author.
'A tale for our times' DAILY MAIL
'Immensely powerful' THE TIMES
The limits of fifteen-year-old Kambili's world are defined by the high walls of her family estate and the dictates of her fanatically religious father. Her life is regulated by schedules: prayer, sleep, study, prayer.
When Nigeria is shaken by a military coup, Kambili's father, involved mysteriously in the political crisis, sends her to live with her aunt. In this house, noisy and full of laughter, she discovers life and love - and a terrible, bruising secret deep within her family.
This extraordinary debut novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of 'Half of a Yellow Sun', is about the blurred lines between the old gods and the new, childhood and adulthood, love and hatred - the grey spaces in which truths are revealed and real life is lived.
'I could not put it down' IRISH TIMES
'An intoxicating story that is at once distinctly feminine, African and universal' OBSERVER
Purple Hibiscus features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Book Club Recommendations, eBooks of the Month, Sharing Diverse Voices, General Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
Purple Hibiscus is available in Paperback, Ebook, Hardback
Purple Hibiscus was written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and published by 4th Estate an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Purple Hibiscus has 320 pages
Yes it is part of Collins Modern Classics series
£8.99
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