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Orange Sun.

So now that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has bagged herself the Orange prize, the Guardian decides it's time for an author profile.

She mentions quite a number of interesting points like how the Western world likes to exoticise Africa:
"We have a long history of Africa being seen in ways that are not very complimentary, and in America [where she has been studying for the past 10 years] being seen as an African writer comes with baggage that we don't necessarily care for. Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe Aids. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations. I was told by a professor at Johns Hopkins University that he didn't believe my first book [Purple Hibiscus, published in 2003] because it was too familiar to him. In other words, I was writing about middle-class Africans who had cars and who weren't starving to death, and therefore to him it wasn't authentically African."
So it's not just Asia that gets exoticised then.

Also, the poor lady had her handbag stolen the night before the awards ceremony! Good thing she won the Orange!
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