Behind the Book
3D mock-up of the book cover for Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Festival stageUpcoming

Festival stage: the single story, twenty years on

with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — Novelist & essayist

Date
Wed, April 22, 2026
Time
local
Venue
Freedom Park, Lagos, NG

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What happens in the room

Our first West African recording: an open-air conversation about complication as a moral argument.

How it went

Four hundred people, one power cut, and the best forty minutes of tape we got all season. The generator is audible in the episode and we kept it.

About Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  • Women's Prize for Fiction, 2007
  • Women's Prize 'Winner of Winners', 2020
  • MacArthur Fellowship, 2008

Born in Enugu and raised on the University of Nigeria campus in Nsukka, Adichie left medicine for literature and published Purple Hibiscus at twenty-six. Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, took four years and a discarded narrator, and remains the book she is asked about most. She divides her time between Lagos and the United States and runs an annual writing workshop in Nigeria.

Listen to episode 126 →

Reserve a seat

RSVP for the evening with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Also with Chimamanda

3D mock-up of the book cover for Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieLive recordingUpcoming

Half of a Yellow Sun · Fourth Estate, 2006

The Nsukka notebooks: four years inside one novel

with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — Novelist & essayist

Women's Prize for Fiction, 2007

Date
Wed, January 14, 2026
Time
local time
Venue
Southbank Centre, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, UK

Our season-four opener: Adichie on the discarded narrator of Half of a Yellow Sun and the memoirs she read until she stopped being frightened.

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3D mock-up of the book cover for Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieIn conversationUpcoming

Half of a Yellow Sun · Fourth Estate, 2006

Late listening room: the chapter I nearly cut

with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — Novelist & essayist

Women's Prize for Fiction, 2007

Date
Thu, January 1, 1970
Time
local time
Venue
Online listening room, Worldwide
Tickets
Free · link emailed to subscribers an hour before

A small online session: one chapter read aloud, then half an hour of questions in the chat.

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