Chimamanda Adichie, the award-winning author, has welcomed twins with her husband at age 47.
The boys, born in April 2024, were revealed during her interview with The Guardian on Saturday.
The writer revealed she kept the birth of her twin from the public to “protect” them.
She said that Nigerians’ curiosity about people’s personal lives makes her even more reluctant to share.
“I want to protect my children. I’m okay with having them mentioned, but I don’t want the piece to become about them,” she said.
“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,” she said.
Chimamanda Adichie will be releasing her first feature-length novel in 11 years in March.
The novel titled ‘Dream Count’ is a reflection on love, desire, and the intricacies of womanhood explored through the lives of four distinct women.
Talking about her writing hiatus, she revealed it happened unplanned after she got pregnant with her first child.
Adichie said she struggled for years to reconnect with her creative self after feeling “cast out” from the part of her that imagines and creates, even though she could still write nonfiction.
“I did not want to leave such a long gap between novels. When I got pregnant with my daughter, something just happened,” she said.
“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.”
Chimamanda Adichie is married to Ivara Esege, a Nigerian doctor. The lovebirds tied the knot in 2009 and welcomed their first daughter in 2016.
Aside from being a novelist, Adichie is also a feminist.
She is best known for her themes on politics, culture, race, and gender.
She has received global recognition and won numerous awards.
In 2019, Chimamanda Adichie became the first Nigerian to receive the United Nations Foundation’s Global Leadership Award.
The writer has also made the New African’s list of ‘100 Most Influential Africans’, New Yorker’s ’20 under 40′, and Time Magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential People’.
