“Apollo” - A Short Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - April 13, 2015 in The New Yorker

Home Page of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie- has links to her short stories

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on The Reading Life

Click here to read “Apollo”

I have been reading the work of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for a few years.  I have posted on two of her three novels, Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus as well as four of her short stories.  I hope to read her latest novel Americanah by the end of next year.  (A detailed bio and links to her short stories can be found on her website.)

“Apollo” is set in Enugu, in Southeastern Nigeria.  The narrator as the story opens is just back from a visit to his parents.  They are retired professors, he was their only child, born many years into the marriage.  He notices his parents are reverting to folk beliefs they would have once scoffed at.  On this latest visit they have news about a house boy they fired fifteen years ago, Raphael. He was arrested as a leader of a gang doing house robberies.  

The narrator begins to think back about Raphael, he was only thirteen.  His parents wanted him to focus on studies and love reading as they did.  He wanted to learn Kung Fu.  Raphael begins to teach him.  We feel a possible sexual stirring.

I don’t want to spoil the second half of the story but you will see the narrator is still troubled by an incident from long ago.  Plus you can learn why the story is called “Apollo”, space travel is not involved.  

This is a very interesting story, about memory, relationships with ageing parents, class markers all subtly done.

Please share your experience with the work of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie with us.

Mel u

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - On the Reading Life

African Reading Challenge - 2017




Half of a Yellow Sun is the second novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie I have had the great pleasure of reading.  Prior to reading this I read her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus and three of her short stories, all of which I loved.  (You can read my posts if you wish at the link above.).

There are five main, and lots of minor, characters in Half of a Yellow Sun.  We have a mathematics professor, his house boy, a corrupt businessman and his twin adult daughters.  In one very telling scene the sisters talk about their father offering one of them as a kind of sexual bribe in order to get a government contract.  There is also an Englishmen, writing a book.  All the characters are very well developed.  I loved how Adiche brought in the mothers of the professor and that of his house boy.  The professor is having a long term affair with one of the twins and mother does not approve at all!  She wants to find him a good girl from back home, not a big city westernized "witch".  The house boy's mother also plays an interesting part.  I was touched to see the professor took the house boy's mother to the doctor.  The houseboy is totally devoted to his employer, who he calls "master". The Englishmen is writing a book.  He is having an affair with the other twin and  is researching Igbo art for his book.  The sister having an affair with a white man is an issue to many, suggesting she thinks whites are superior.



Half a Yellow Sun (named for the flag of Biafra) is set in the period of the Biafran War, 1967 to 1970, for Independence from Nigeria.  The Igbo people from southern Nigeria wanted to escape the domination of the Nigerian Federal government, dominated by northern Nigerians.   We learn from the conversations of the professor that many intellectual citizens of Nigeria view the currently existing national entities as totally remnants of colonialism, the boundaries set by European countries.  Many advocate a return to tribal identities.  The novel brilliantly depicts the very complex set of factors in play.  You have a tiny, depicted as very corrupt elite, their educated westernized children and a great mass of the poor, tribal people.  This is very much a story of cultural clashes.

Adiche vividly depicts the terrible violence and suffering caused by the war.  We see the terrible atmosphere of fear, the drafting of young boys in their early teens as soldiers, the changes as the war closes.  The sex scenes are very well done, we sadly see the mass rapes as part of war and the inferior position of women.

Half of a Yellow Sun is a wonderful book.  The characters, even the minor ones, I admit I loved it when the professor's mother showed up unexpectedly, took over the house and went off on her son because she feels his girl friend is not right for him.  This is a very deep as well as exciting book.

I read this as part of my participation in The African Reading Challenge 2017.  Next year for the 2018 event I hope to read her third novel, Americanah.




Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, a New York Times Notable Book, and a People and Black Issues Book Review Best Book of the Year; and the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck. Her latest novel Americanah, was published around the world in 2013, and has received numerous accolades, including winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction; and being named one of The New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year.
A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.  -from the author's website

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. (2003)

Purple Hibiscus is the debut novel of the highly regarded Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  This is a great novel, a triumph of the art of the story teller.  It is narrated by a fourteen year old Nigerian girl from a very affluent Catholic family with Ibo roots. The family, the girl, her brother and their mother is rigidly controlled by the father.  He came from a family that believed in traditional tribal religious, his great same is that his own father is what he calls "a pagan".  The father is ashamed of his roots, his racial identity, seeing the ways of white petiole as superior to the traditional culture in which he was raised.  Adichie lets us feel the deep selfloathing of the father and we see how it is causative in his abusive treatment of his children and his wife.  The father is the editor of a newspaper that speaks out on government abuse and also owns a number of factories. He is basically a decent man in many ways, generous with his employees and extended family.  His children attend an elite Catholic school and have been raised in complete isolation from the terrible poverty of Nigeria.  The father very much loves his children and his wife but the harm done to his psyche by the legacy of colinialism is very powerful.  He schedules every minute of their day.  

The novel gives us a deep feel for the day to day life of the family.  In Nigerian culture reverence for parents is very important.  The father, however, cannot accept that his own father never converted to Catholicism.  He also has a sister, a professor at a university.  He reluctantly agrees to allow  his children to spend a few days at her house so they can get to know their cousins.  He tells them they can visit their Grandfather but only under his very strict rules. 

There are terribly things that happen in this novel, reflecting the violence and chaos of Nigerian society. The characters are perfectly done, finely realized.  The girl does not fully understand all that goes on around her but we see her understanding grow through her experiences.  

Purple Hibiscus is very much a family story, a story about the impact of colonialism, about the transition from a tribal Ibo society to a western society.  There is senseless cruelty, violence and corruption but also great goodness in this wonderful novel.  The narrative is very exciting and it is a foodies primer on Ibo gastronomy.  There are lush images of fruit and purple hibiscuses I greatly enjoyed having placed in my consciousness.  

I am so glad I read this wonderful novel.  I hope I can one day read her two other novels.  

Mel u

Bio Data

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, a New York Times Notable Book, and a People and Black Issues Book Review Best Book of the Year; and the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck. Her latest novel Americanah, was published around the world in 2013, and has received numerous accolades, including winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction; and being named one of The New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year.

A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.  From the author's webpage 

"Birdsong" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2010, from The New Yorker Twenty Under Forty Collection)

I have previously read and posted on a few short stories by the very highly regarded Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  I hope to read her longer works one day.  I was looking at one of my short story collections this morning, 20 Under 40, Stories From The New Yorker and was happy to discover one of her stories in the collection. 

Set in Lagos "Birdsong" is a very interesting story centering on an unmarried woman, working in an office, the married man she is having an affair with and one of her work friends.  Her work friend tells her she needs to drop the married man and find a man to "settle down with" before it is "too late".  The story lets us see into the mind of the woman, learn about class markers and social issues in Nigeria and we can decide if the man is a user or not.

I am glad I read this very well crafted story.

Mel u