Nigerian author, Chimamanda Adichie, has revealed that she gave birth to twin boys in 2024, adding to her family, including her nine-year-old daughter.
In a recent interview with The Guardian’s Charlotte Edwardes, Adichie spoke about the intense curiosity surrounding her life, the profound losses she has experienced, and the challenges of balancing motherhood with her writing career.
Adichie, who has kept the details of her private life under wraps, revealed that she was always cautious about revealing too much, particularly when it came to her family.
“I want to protect my children,” she explained. “I’m OK with having them mentioned, but I don’t want the piece to become about them,” she shared.
She was said to have further expressed her resistance to sharing personal details with the public, stating that for a long time, people didn’t even know she had a husband, Ivara Esege, a hospital physician, whom she married in 2009, but kept that information largely out of the media spotlight.
Explaining why she keeps her private life hidden, Adichie was quoted as saying, “So, here’s the thing, Nigerians are… they want to know about your personal life. Because of that, I am resistant. I very rarely talk about it.”
At the age of 47, which she reportedly described as a “grand old age” and that “I always forget how old I am. I’m not even joking,” Adichie juggled the pressures of motherhood with the demands of finishing her long-awaited novel—a task she had not anticipated taking so long.
