Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Read 'The Thing Around Your Neck', a collection of short stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian writer, who is right now at the Jaipur Literary Fest.

A fascinating glimpse of Nigeria, a peep into its dreams and trials, as seen through the eyes of its women. Noticed a lot of similarities with India, the same ambitions of a better life in the West, the same discoveries, the same gender issues, almost similar customs.

You've probably heard her on TED, that great talk about the danger of believing in cultural stereotypes, of having only "one story" about a culture, and not bothering to dig further into what they really are: "Show a people as one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become." "It (a single story) emphasises how we are different, not how we are similar."

http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

Hopefully the internet has reduced such ignorance?

The Thing Around Your Neck

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie burst onto the literary scene with her remarkable debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, which critics hailed as “one of the best novels to come out of Africa in years” (Baltimore Sun ), with “prose as lush as the Nigerian landscape that it powerfully evokes” ( The Boston Globe ); The Washington Post called her “the twenty-first-century daughter of Chinua Achebe.” Her award-winning Half of a Yellow Sun became an instant classic upon its publication three years later, once again putting her tremendous gifts—graceful storytelling, knowing compassion, and fierce insight into her characters’ hearts—on display.

Now, in her most intimate and seamlessly crafted work to date, Adichie turns her penetrating eye on not only Nigeria but America, in twelve dazzling stories that explore the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States.

More here: http://www.shelfari.com/books/12833751/The-Thing-Around-Your-Neck

Available here:

http://www.flipkart.com/thing-around-your-neck-chimamanda-book-0007326777