Renowned Nigerian writer and literary icon, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, has revealed that she welcomed twin boys in 2024.
The celebrated author, known for bestsellers like Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah, shared that she chose to keep their birth private to protect her family’s privacy.
Speaking in an interview with The Guardian’s Charlotte Edwardes, Adichie, 47, opened up about the intense public curiosity surrounding her life, her personal losses, and the struggle of balancing motherhood with her creative work.
The interview, published recently, sheds light on why she rarely shares details about her private affairs.
Adichie, who has always been private about her personal life, explained that she is careful about how much she reveals, especially when it concerns her children.
“I want to protect my children,” she said. “I’m OK with having them mentioned, but I don’t want the piece to become about them.”
For years, the award-winning author managed to keep major aspects of her life away from the public eye. Many were unaware that she was married to Dr. Ivara Esege, a hospital physician, whom she wed in 2009. Her decision to maintain that privacy, she said, was deliberate.
Explaining why she is reserved about discussing her personal affairs, Adichie was quoted as saying, “So, here’s the thing, Nigerians are… they want to know about your personal life. Because of that, I am resistant. I very rarely talk about it.”
At 47, Adichie, who humorously described herself as being at a “grand old age,” admitted that she sometimes forgets how old she is. While managing the challenges of motherhood, she also worked on completing her highly anticipated novel, Dream Count, a project that took longer than expected.
The novel, set for release on 3 March 2025, follows the lives of four women, diving into themes of migration, cultural identity, and the pressures of marriage and motherhood. It marks her return to fiction after over a decade, a break she hadn’t planned.
Reflecting on why it took so long, Adichie admitted that motherhood created a mental block that made writing fiction difficult.
“I didn’t want to leave such a long gap between novels. When I got pregnant [with her daughter], something just happened. I had a number of years in which I was almost existentially frightened that I wouldn’t write again. It was unbearable,” she said.
She explained that while she could write nonfiction, fiction, which is closest to her heart, felt unreachable for years.
The breakthrough, according to her, came when she worked on Notes on Grief, a book she wrote in 2021 after the death of her father in 2020. While mourning, she realised something had shifted in her creativity.
The report noted that as she struggled to find the right words for her grief memoir, she noticed a shift—one that made her feel “willing to let go.” She described it as a return to the same creative flow she had missed in fiction writing.
Adichie also lost her mother in 2021, a loss that she initially struggled to put into words. However, as she worked on Dream Count, she later realised that the book was, in a way, a tribute to her late mother.
“Only when I was almost done did I realise, my God, it’s about my mother. It wasn’t intentional. I’m happy that it’s not a sad book. She wouldn’t want a sad book dedicated to her,” she said.
