Half Of A Yellow Sun author to release memoir called ‘Notes On Grief’

Author of Half Of A Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is to release a memoir about the sudden death of her father during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown.

Notes on Grief is a “a timely and deeply personal … work of meditation, remembrance and hope” and will be published on 11th May 2021.

Adichie’s father, James Nwoye Adichie, died suddenly from complications of kidney failure while in Nigeria last summer. The author wrote of the difficulties surrounding his death as well as her own reactions while she was living apart from him in the USA.

The award-wining writer wrote of how her four-year-old daughter copies her mother’s response to hearing the sad news: “She gets down on her knees to demonstrate, her small clenched fist rising and falling, and her mimicry makes me see myself as I was, utterly unravelling, screaming and pounding the floor.”

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Adichie’s extended version of the essay tells the story of her father “a remarkable man of kindness and charm”, exploring the nature of grief and “being one of the millions of people grieving, about the familial and cultural dimensions of grief, and also about the loneliness and anger that accompany it”.

Speaking with the Guardian in late 2020, Adichie described her father as “the loveliest man” and that she feels “been remade by grief” after losing him.

Editor Nick Pearson of 4th Estate said: “Notes on Grief is a moving tribute to the father Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie loved fiercely and whose sudden death devastated her. It will be treasured by readers for the light it sheds on the pain of navigating the loss of someone we love.”