'My siblings and I, for example, speak an Igbo that's very different from my father's because our Igbo has become anglicized. But my father's Igbo is still quite beautiful and rich. I hope my writing somehow acknowledges my language experience, the fluidity-the fact that English is mine. But it's a particular kind of English. I want to write about characters who speak mostly English, I suppose, but who also are very much part of another language, and who sometimes have their English conditioned by Igbo,' the writer said.

Adichie grew up reading a lot of British children's books.

'Purple Hibiscus', Adichie's first novel, did very well in Nigeria.

It is about 15-year-old Kambili, who lives in fear of her father in a repressive home. But a military coup liberates her and she discovers laughter in her aunt's home where she goes to live. It also unlocks a terrible secret at the heart of her family life.

' 'Purple Hibiscus' was enormously popular, and is now on the syllabus for the West African Examinations Council, the secondary school examination.

Its success has been gratifying,' she said.

'I was a bit more worried about 'Half of A Yellow Sun', because in that novel I was digging around in places that people didn't necessarily think I should be digging around. There were people who thought it better to leave the past alone. But 'Half of A Yellow Sun' has done quite well. And I think it started a conversation. Once I was at the airport. I was going to visit my parents, who live in the east. I was just thrilled to see four different people at the airport reading my book. Nigeria, by the way, is not a country of readers, at least not novel readers. Nigerians will read newspapers and gossip magazines, and that's it,' Adichie said.

'Half of a Yellow Sun' is the tale of three different lives-a houseboy, a young woman and a professor-in the Nigeria of 1960, torn by civil war.

(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)