Tom's guest today is the internationally acclaimed writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She is the author of the novels Americanah, Purple Hibiscus, and Half of a Yellow Sun. She has also published best-selling collections of essays and short stories. She has won several prestigious awards, including the Orange Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award and a MacArthur Foundation fellowship.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born and raised in Nigeria. She splits her time between Nigeria and the United States, where she has a home here in Maryland.

Her latest book is profoundly sad and consummately beautiful. It is a meditation on the nature of grief, occasioned by the unexpected passing of her beloved father, James Nwoye Adichie, who died in June of last year, at the age of 88. After the book was published, Chimamanda and her five siblings suffered another tragedy, when their mother, Grace Ifeoma Adichie passed away in March of 2021 at the age of 78. A favorite aunt had died suddenly in London a year before that. Another aunt died shortly after her father. It’s been a rough year for the Adichie family.

The book is called Notes on Grief. It expands on her series of essays that were published last year in The New Yorker.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie joined Tom on Zoom from her home in Lagos, Nigeria.

Their conversation was pre-recorded, so we aren’t able to take any calls or comments today.

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