Demob Happy

Flowering talent

7/10

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a precocious talent. Purple Hibiscus is a tale of sexual and politcal awakening in contemporary Nigeria. Its narrator, Kambili - like her country itself - is undergoing a huge transformation as she breaks away from her abusive, puritanical father, a wealthy philanthropist in the community but a violent hypocrit at home. Introverted and repressed, she learns to express herself in the company of her poorer but more open and spirited cousins, and her inspiring aunt, a University lecturer.

This is set against the backdrop of corruption and political assasinations, which menace Kambili’s father as the owner of a leftwing newspaper openly criticising the government. Strangely, her father’s righteousness in combating Nigeria’s nafarious politicans is not extended to his parochial homelife, nor to his dying traditionalist father, exiled from their family home for being a ‘heathen’. Kambili comes to favour the hand-to-mouth existence of her Aunt’s household over the relative luxury of her own family home as she comes to terms with the injustice of her father’s abuse and her own sexual awakenings, provoked by the charming young priest Father Armadi.

It is a classic mould for fiction with comfortbaly universal themes. But the writing is highly evocative, with the young author able to conjur a rich and tangible vision of Nigerian life with mature and precise prose. Neither showy nor self-consciously economic, Adichie is a rare and exciting talent.