Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as Chinua Achebe's (Unruly) Literary Daughter: The Past, Present, and Future of "Adichebean" Criticism

This essay focuses on the—already much-discussed—literary relationship between Nigerian writers Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Following an introduction on the state of what the article calls, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, "Adichebean" criticism, the essay investigates how Adichie's ambiguous interventions on the topic of her affiliation with Achebe have defined her own literary identity but also, more generally, how her declarations may provide food for thought in regard to the wider field of contemporary African writing and its criticism. One of the central points developed in the essay is that existing comparative studies of Achebe's and Adichie's works have tended to focus on particular topics and use similar methods of inquiry and that further lines of investigation need to be pursued if we are to build a nuanced and comprehensive picture of the connections and divergences between Achebe and his increasingly "unruly" literary offspring. It is to this "rebelliousness" that the final part of the essay attends by appraising the possible significance of Adichie's oppositional stance in her two lukewarm assessments of Achebe's final opus, his nonfictional There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra (2012).