Purple HibiscusA touching and heart rending story, told with an extraordinary self confidence that is rare in debut novel Purple Hibiscus captures for us the traumatic moments of a wealthy Nigerian family as it gradually breaks up, mined tragically, on the one hand, by the cruel abuses of a father turned callous by an inexorable, fanatic brand of Catholicism, and on the other, by the familiar brutalities of the murderous military regimes of our recent past. The