Born in Enugu, Nigeria, on September 15, 1977, Adichie was the fifth of six children born to James Nwoye Adichie and Grace Ifeoma, who both worked at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka. Adichie often draws on her own experiences in her work, and in “Apollo,” Okenwa grows up in similar circumstances: He is an upper-middle-class boy living in Adichie’s own hometown of Enugu with two university professors for parents. Adichie’s family lived in a house on campus that once belonged to the celebrated Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, whose novel Things Fall Apart (1958) tremendously impacted Adichie when she read it at 10 years old. Before then, she hadn’t realized that literature could be about people like her or topics that were relevant to her life. After discovering Achebe and other African authors, she “realized that people like [her], girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature” (Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Danger of a Single Story.” TED.com, TEDGlobal, 2009).

After briefly studying medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria, the 19-year-old Adichie moved to America to study communications and political science at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, before transferring to Eastern State Connecticut University.