Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Apr 2013 · W F Howes · Narrated by Adjoa Andoh

About this audiobook

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEY S WOMEN S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2014.
From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a powerful story of love, race and identity.
As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a blogger. But after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face?
Fearless, gripping, spanning three continents and numerous lives, the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning ‘Americanah' is a richly told story of love and expectation set in today's globalized world.
“Actress Adjoa Andoh brings to life Adichie's complex, beautifully wrought novel – which is both a love story and a nuanced analysis of political topics including systemic racism in America; immigration in the UK; and the class system in Nigeria.” VOGUE
“One of the previous decade's landmark novels... Andoh is a skilled, exciting narrator.” THE TIMES

Ratings and reviews

Absolutely loved this book, difficult to put it down. It engages you with the characters & I found myself fully immersed in it. The end was...interesting... As an African that lived home & overseas, I could relate in so many ways. I was saddened by the book ending.

Breathtaking. I wished it would go on and on. The narrator is incredible. Bravo!

Fantastic, just too much.

About the author

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Enugu, Nigeria on September 15, 1977. She studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for a year and a half before moving to the United States, where she studied communication at Drexel University for two years. She received a bachelor's degree in communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University in 2001, a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University, and a master's degree in African Studies from Yale University in 2008. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, was published in 2003 and received the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in 2005. Her other books include The Thing around Your Neck, Americanah, and We Should All Be Feminist. Half of a Yellow Sun won the Orange Prize in 2007. She was awarded the 2018 PEN Pinter Prize, for her body of work that shows 'outstanding literary merit'.