A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Woodbridge: James Currey (hb £30 – 978 1 84701 162 6 ; pb £17.99 – 978 1 84701 241 8 ). 2017, xii + 300 pp.

Ernest E. Emenyonu (editor), A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Woodbridge: James Currey (hb £30–978 1 84701 162 6 ; pb £17.99–978 1 84701 241 8). 2017, xii + 300 pp.

To say that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the most influential contemporary African writers is to state the obvious, except to readers unfamiliar with her phenomenal interventions in African letters and thought. But even these readers will need little persuading after working through the twenty-seven-page bibliographic list of Adichie's works in all genres, compiled by Daria Tunca, in the closing chapter of A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. As the editor of this timely collection – renowned literary scholar Ernest E. Emenyonu – observes in his introductory essay, the novelist, essayist and social commentator has ‘bridged gaps and introduced new motifs and narrative styles which have energized African fiction since her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003)’. This distinction alone makes this essay collection an opportune intervention – and, one hopes, the first of many to come. The very range of perspectives in this volume points to the scope for further essay collections and monographs on Adichie's work. In a global academy notorious for single-origin tables of contents – often smugly featuring all-white or all Northern-based contributors to entire edited books or journals on Africa – it is refreshing to read an essay collection that honours the cross-cultural resonance of Adichie's writing by showcasing interventions by scholars based in different corners of the world, beyond the ubiquitous US and Europe. In this regard, this essay collection doubles up as a mapping of responses to Adichie's writing from places as diverse as Cameroon and India, Italy and a Catholic diocese in Owerri, Nigeria.

This volume contains seventeen essays organized in chronological order according to the publication dates of Adichie's works, starting with six essays on Purple Hibiscus, four on Half of a Yellow Sun, two on The Thing Around Your Neck and four on Americanah. Essay collections on a single author often present a structuring dilemma for editors, and each possible structure inevitably comes with its own affordances and expenses. The choice of a chronological structure here makes for a reader-friendly encounter that should be welcomed by those familiar with Adichie scholarship...