Award-winning author and feminist, Chimamanda Adichie and her husband, Dr. Ivara Esege have welcomed twins.
The 47-year-old mother announced the birth of her sons during an interview with The Guardian on Saturday.
The writer said she kept the birth of her twins who were born in April 2024 private to protect them.
Chidimma expressed discomfort with Nigerians’ curiosity about people’s personal lives, noting that it makes her reluctant to speak about her children.
She said, “I want to protect my children. I’m okay with having them mentioned, but I don’t want the piece to become about them.”
“So, here is the thing, Nigerians are sosy. They want to know about your personal life. Because of that, I am resistant. I very rarely talk about it.”
Speaking on her writing hiatus, the writer said it occurred unplanned after she got pregnant with her first child.
Adichie revealed that she struggled for years to reconnect with her creative self after feeling “cast out” from her imagination, though she could still write nonfiction.
She said, “I did not want to leave such a long gap between novels. When I got pregnant with my 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.”
“There are expressions like ‘writer’s block’ I don’t like to use because I’m superstitious. But I had many years in which I felt cast out from my creative self, cast out from the part of me that imagines and creates; I just could not reach it.”
“I could write nonfiction, that was fine. But that’s not what my heart wanted.”
Chidimma tied the knot with her husband in 2009. They welcomed their first daughter in 2016.
She became the first Nigerian to receive the United Nations Foundation’s Global Leadership Award in 2019.
Chidimma was also recognised by Times Magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential People’, New Yorker’s ’20 under 40′, and the United Nations Foundation’s Global Leadership Award.
Her upcoming fictional novel, “Dream Count” is set to be released in March 2025, after 11 years of hiatus.
