Adichie focuses on Nigeria's present for new novel

LAGOS, Nigeria — The traffic is there, grinding life to a halt as the middle class pound out messages on BlackBerry mobile phones and worry about Facebook. The heat, the sweat and the daily tragedy of unclaimed bodies lying alongside roadways, passers-by hurrying past for fear of someone else's misfortune becoming entangled in their own.


This is modern life in Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, which becomes almost a character of its own in novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's new book, "Americanah." And within its pages, one catches self-acknowledged glimpses of the writer herself, who shot to fame with her previous love story set during Nigeria's civil war called "Half of a Yellow Sun."