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One of Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s toddler twins has died, her family has confirmed.<\/p>\n
An official family statement said that 21-month-old boy Nkanu Nnamdi, who the novelist had with her husband Dr Ivara Esege, died on Wednesday after a brief illness.<\/p>\n
Issued on behalf of the family by Omawumi Ogbe, the statement said they were “devastated by this profound loss”, and thanked well-wishers while also asking for privacy and prayers.<\/p>\n
Award-winning US-based writer Adichie is known for works including Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah and her 2012 Ted Talk and essay We Should All Be Feminists, which was sampled by Beyonc\u00e9 on her 2013 song Flawless.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
A key figure in postcolonial feminist literature, her work explores themes around gender and immigration.<\/p>\n
In 2015, she was listed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people.<\/p>\n
Adichie, 48, had her first child, a daughter, in 2016. In 2024, her twin boys were born using a surrogate.<\/p>\n
Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu is among those to have expressed his condolences, saying “no grief is as devastating as losing a child”.<\/p>\n
“I empathise with the family at this difficult time,” he said in a statement on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2020, her 2006 novel Half of a Yellow Sun was voted the best book to have won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in its 25-year history.<\/p>\n Speaking to the BBC last year around the release of her novel Dream Count, she stressed how she wanted her books to be read in Africa.<\/a><\/p>\n She also explained how the writer’s block she had experienced while pregnant<\/a> with her first child was “terrifying”.<\/p>\n “It’s a really frightening place to be, because writing is the thing that gives me meaning,” the acclaimed author told Emma Barnett.<\/p>\n In 2022, in a BBC lecture on freedom of speech, the writer said young people were growing up “afraid to ask questions<\/a> for fear of asking the wrong questions”.<\/p>\n Such a climate could lead to “the death of curiosity, the death of learning and the death of creativity”, she said during one of the BBC’s annual Reith lectures.<\/p>\n “No human endeavour requires freedom as much as creativity does,” she added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n