--- description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. title: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie by Radhika Jones: TIME 100 image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcbf9f32bec3658a2/6987eb215f570fe04bb19238/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-time-100-2015-artists.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Apr 15, 2015 # Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie by Radhika Jones  Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Washington, DC on October 29, 2014. Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Washington, DC on October 29, 2014.Stephen Voss—Redux It’s the rare novelist who in the space of a year finds her words sampled by Beyoncé, optioned by Lupita Nyong’o and honored with the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. But the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is just that sort of novelist. A MacArthur “genius” grant recipient, Adichie writes of the complex aftermath of Nigeria’s colonial history and her nation’s rise to prominence in an era when immigration to the West no longer means a one-way ticket. With her viral TEDxEuston talk, “We Should All Be Feminists,” she found her voice as cultural critic. (You can hear it rising midway through Beyoncé’s woman-power anthem “Flawless.”) She sets her love stories amid civil war (_Half of a Yellow Sun_) and against a backdrop of racism and migration (_Americanah_). But her greatest power is as a creator of characters who struggle profoundly to understand their place in the world. _Jones is a deputy managing editor of_ TIME Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie by Radhika Jones: TIME 100 ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/2015-time-100/3823296/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-2015-time-100/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/2015-time-100/3823296/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-2015-time-100/"},"headline":"Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie","datePublished":"2015-04-15T17:54:16.000Z","dateModified":"2026-07-21T07:22:39.677Z","description":"Conjurer of character","url":"https://time.com/collections/2015-time-100/3823296/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-2015-time-100/","keywords":["TIME 100"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcbf9f32bec3658a2/6987eb215f570fe04bb19238/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-time-100-2015-artists.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"creator":"TIME Staff","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcbf9f32bec3658a2/6987eb215f570fe04bb19238/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-time-100-2015-artists.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/2015-time-100/3823296/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-2015-time-100/","name":"Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie"}}]}] ```