Purple Hibiscus
by Ngozi Adichie
(Fourth Estate)
Purple Hibiscus, which has been nominated for both the Orange Prize and was on the Booker longlist, is a complex book. At the same time, it is beautifully simple. It is complex because Nigerian writer Ngozi Adichie bravely poses questions that have no simple or single answers; yet she does this through a simple use of the language of a 15-year-old protagonist.
Kambili is the daughter of a Nigerian newspaperman, a dominant figure who is also a devout Catholic. To Kambili, God is a supernatural being who will give her good things if she prays as often as possible. Although she does not realise it, she identifies God and her father — a man who, she thinks at the start of the novel, epitomises perfection. He has financial, social and domestic power.
But, as Nigeria begins to fall apart after a coup, things also begin to fall apart for Kambili’s father, who is editor of a cut-throat investigative newspaper called The Standard. The family begins to fall apart too, and Kambili and her brother Jaja have to go and live with an aunt. Her home is far from clean or pure and it certainly does not glow of order, but amid the disorder and deprivation of her aunt’s home Kambili for the first time discovers freedom, and a new kind of love. She also begins to accept the truth about her father — that he is after all just a man. In fact, he is a man with serious flaws. He is repressive, ill-tempered and abusive. Away from his children, Kambili’s father also begins to learn to accept the truth about himself.
Purple Hibiscus makes one think about what religion means to people in a changing society. But the book is about a lot of things — it explores power relations within the family and juxtaposes these relations against the power relations of a country such as Nigeria. It also investigates the role of the media. But, most of all, in this novel Adichie manages to explore the intriguing power of love and truth.