Zikora: A Short Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: book review

Zikora (2020) is set in Nigeria.

Zikora, a lawyer in Washington DC, returns to Nigeria for the birth of her child when the father, Kwame, abandons her. Zikora’s mother attends the birth. The baby is a boy.

Her father was happy about the birth, but her mother was not. She reflects on her own childhood and how she got to this point. Why does her mother make her feel like a child again, just as her the life she dreamed about is falling apart?

This is a novella – a brief story of motherhood and the mother-child relationship. It is not as powerful as I expected it be. I prefer her 2009 novel, Half of a Yellow Sun.

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MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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