Purple Hibiscus: Ten years and still counting

The year started with the ubiquitous trite about a new decade and a review of the previous one, and as a literary lover, I thought about picking a book of the decade; while a couple of books stand out, ‘Purple Hibiscus’ seems incomparable.

Talk about a book with piercing lines and hammering words and I present to you Chimamanda Adichie’s ‘Purple Hibiscus.’ The opening line opens the reader to a world of whirling whirlwind and intriguing imagination as the author unravels different layers of a typical Nigerian family, using an Igbo Catholic as its focus.

Set during the military regime, the novel features Kambili, a fragile voice caged by her father, Papa, whose piety is known to all and sundry. Fascinatingly, upholding this pillar of piety makes the man the ‘distributor’ of physical, emotional and mental abuse to every member of his nuclear family. From burning the feet of Kambili because she comes second in school, to ‘dousing’ his pregnant wife in torrents of beatings because she hesitates about visiting the priest because of pregnancy cramps, Papa is the symbol of terror coated in the superficial care he exuded to the world.

Kambili’s silence speaks volumes when she visits their aunt alongside her brother, where they later experience the ‘breeze’ of freedom, and embraces defiance; the kind that defies all odds and take responsibility for their actions and inactions, damning every consequence.

In ‘Purple Hibiscus,’ Chimamanda addresses a lot of themes that span across family, religion, piety, politics, motherhood, love, societal structures and other daily nuances. A sumptuous spice to the novel was the unspoken endearment and affection between Father Amadi, an ebullient priest and Kambili, the heroine.

Sometimes, love intoxicates, sometimes it liberates, and it was this liberating force of love that acted as the catalyst for a captivating unusual affection between the 17-year-old Kambili and the priest.

Jaja’s heroic act of going to the prison in place of his mother is one of the underrated, yet enunciated acts in the novel, while the balanced style of parenting Aunty Ifeoma displayed is one of the many didactic lessons the author intends to pass across.

Purple Hibiscus is one of Nigeria’s lasting classics and it is worth reading over and over again.

• Faith is a Lagos-based writer and poet.