12 Books from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s bookshelf that will make you love her even more

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is perhaps the most popular contemporary African author. And we all love and adore her so much.

I cannot categorically explain when I fell in love with her, but I can tell you for certain my love for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was solidified when I learned she loves books as much as I do.

Curated from interviews she did in the past, here are some of her favorite books that will make you love her even more (her reviews included)

1. The Dark Child by Camera Laye

2. Middlemarch  by George Elliot

3. Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals by Ahmadou Kourouma:

"This is a humourous, irreverent and unabashedly political novel; it is an enraged lament about post-colonial Africa and how the leaders who inherited supposedly independent countries went on to fail their citizens."

4. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

5. Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid

6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker:

"I admired the fierce honesty in the single-mindedly feminist world-view of this book. It breaks many of the “rules” of fiction." I applauded Celie’s sexual awakening. And, most of all, I liked the idea that God gets angry if we walk past a field with the colour purple and don’t notice it."

7. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

8  Reef by Romesh Gunesekera

9. Derek Walcott Collected Poems 1948-1984

10. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev:

"Turgenev said that he could not “sweeten his characters with syrup,” that he had to tell the truth, even at the expense of his own sympathies. I loved this book as a teenager and have never forgotten how completely absorbed I was by Turgenev’s wonderfully evocative world."

11. No Sweetness Here by Ama Ata Aidoo.

Saving the best for last:

12. Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe:

"Before I read Achebe as a child in Nigeria, I read only foreign children’s books, and so I wrote about the same things I was reading – all my characters were White and the stories were set in England or a generic Westernised country. I had not read books that featured people like me, so I thought that books couldn’t include people like me. Until I discovered Achebe. I didn’t realise it at the time, of course – I was too young to be consciously aware of that sort of thing – but later I would realise that reading Achebe was a turning point.

It made me see that it was, in fact, possible for people of colour to exist within literature. Arrow of God has remained one of my favourite novels. Set in 1920s Igboland, it tells the story of a remarkable priest, Ezeulu, and a British administrator, and the ways in which colonialism brought not only political but cultural changes. It is funny and absorbing, moving and beautiful. I love this book."

See more of her favorite books on Oprah.co.za

Compliment this list with , See all the beautiful books Yewande Omotoso is currently readin and Chinelo Okparanta favorite books

ALSO READ: 7 African literature books to read if you love Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie