After son’s death, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says she does ‘not want to go back to Nigeria’

In a new interview with The New York Times, the acclaimed author reflected on the loss of her son and her fight to get answers.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie no longer feels that Nigeria is “home.”

The acclaimed author has been vocal about the changes she’s experienced since her 21-month-old son died following a medical emergency. After sharing a social media post alleging medical negligence by the hospital over her son’s care in June, she’s expounding on how losing her son has prompted her to have a different feeling towards her homeland.

“My feelings toward Nigeria have changed,” Adichie told The New York Times in a recent interview. When asked if the country still felt like somewhere close to her heart, she offered an even more blunt response.

“I do not want to go back to Nigeria.”

In December 2025, one of her twins boys, Nkanu, had come down with a fever and Adichie’s husband, Ivara Esege, started antibiotics for him. However, his condition had not improved and the couple took the child to the hospital. Doctors at Euracare took the boy in for an examination, and he was set to be seen at Johns Hopkins University as a patient.

The child never made it to Johns Hopkins.

During his examination at Euracare, the child was sedated with propofol during an MRI, but a doctor rushed toward her in “pure panic,” according to Adichie. The child went into cardiac arrest and died the next day.

“He was very calm and he said to me, ‘Well, look, they gave him too much Propofol,’” Adichie recalled. “Those were his exact words, which I will never forget until the day I die.”

The couple is still grieving the loss of their son and has called for a better health care system for Nigeria, and is not suing the hospital. The cororner’s inquest into Nkanu’s death has turned into its own fight with delays and accusations from Euracare that Adichie and her husband destroyed evidence by cremating their son’s body.

When asked if Adichie would ever return to Nigeria, she revealed her children would be the only reason, with her daughter referring to the country as her “happy place.” Before approaching that thought, it had been six months since she’d been to Nigeria, the place where she feels she received “everything” to be able to write.

But the pain of loss weighed heavier.

“I mean, it is so surreal, all of this. I still can’t believe we’re talking about my son who died,” she said. “You’re going through something, but you also feel like you’re outside of it.”