Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

So, I seem to be experiencing an inverse proportion equation of sorts. Tonight I went to my third Drue Heinz Lecture of the year (a series of lectures from writers) and, unlike the other two lectures (Nafisi and Patchett), tonight I had not read a book by the author.

For the lecture given by Azar Nafisi, an author I had read and loved, I sat in the second balcony, far enough above her head to not see the glint from her glasses. In order to hear Ann Patchett, I sat off to the left, in the shadowy wings of the orchestra floor. And tonight, with a ticket I got for free for an author I had never read, I sat in the dead center of the second row.

It seems that the less I know of an author, the closer to her I get to sit.

I was not bored. Chimamanda Adichie engaged her audience from the first word: speaking of imagining bagels, reading Chinua Achebe for the first time, walking into her American dorm room, and writing what she knows. Not even five years older than I am, she is the author of two novels about Nigeria, and working on a third. Lectures given by storytellers are hard to recap, so I shall give you the titles of her books, both of which are now on my "to read list," which is long enough to reach to the non-planet Pluto and back:

Purple Hibiscus, 1st novel
Half of a Yellow Sun, most recent novel