Where to start with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Nigerian novelist, born 1977. Won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2007.

Best Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book to start with: Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), on 6 of the 14 lists it could have made.

Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2007, is the book to begin with. It follows several people through the Nigerian civil war, and although it is long and sometimes painful, the characters carry you through it.

If you want an easier first book, Americanah is the one to try. A young Nigerian woman goes to the United States and later returns home, with a love story running through it, and it reads faster than its length suggests. It was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize in 2014.

Purple Hibiscus is her first novel and the shortest of the four. A teenage girl narrates life in a strict Catholic household, and it is a good way to find out whether you like her writing before you take on the longer books. It was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize in 2004.

Dream Count is the newest, shortlisted for Fiction Book of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2026. Read it fourth, once you have a feel for how she writes.