The limits of fifteen-year-old Kambili?s world are defined by the high walls of her family estate and the dictates of her fanatically religious father. Her life is regulated by schedules: prayer, sleep, study, prayer.When Nigeria is shaken by a military coup, Kambili?s father, involved mysteriously in the political crisis, sends her to live with her aunt. In this house, noisy and full of laughter, she discovers life and love ? and a terrible, bruising secret deep within her family.This extraordinary debut novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of ?Half of a Yellow Sun?, is about the blurred lines between the old gods and the new, childhood and adulthood, love and hatred ? the grey spaces in which truths are revealed and real life is lived.