Americanah: A novel

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

May 2013 · Sold by Vintage

About this ebook

10th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A modern classic about star-crossed lovers that explores questions of race and being Black in America—and the search for what it means to call a place home. • From the award-winning author of We Should All Be Feminists and Half of a Yellow Sun • WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

"An expansive, epic love story."—O, The Oprah Magazine
 
One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be Black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post–9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.

At once powerful and tender, Americanah is a remarkable novel that is "dazzling…funny and defiant, and simultaneously so wise." —San Francisco Chronicle

Ratings and reviews

I have tried to finish this book 5 times now, and still can't get through it. I have never not finished a book, I even made it all the way through Stephen King's It. I was very interested in the content based on the author's interview on NPR, but the book just didn't deliver in the least. There were so many meaningless character introductions and encounters that in no way built a plot or storyline, that at times it felt like I was reading a series of separate essays. Unlikable characters, poorly executed.

It takes you to a world of the familiar, exotic, and emotional. The characters are brought to life while the reader travels through the same experiences. My written review pales in comparison to how I felt journeying page to page; more enthusiastic about what happens next but fearing the end of the trip. The Nigeria I remembered from the 1990s and early 2000s became nostalgic. Throughout, I felt what can only be explained in the defined spectrum of human emotions as sadness and happiness at the same time.

This beautifully woven story of feeling in between all your life really hit home with me. The struggle with seeing in other's what you find lacking in yourself, the insecurity of it all...just wow. It made me feel connected to the love and loss.

About the author

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into more than fifty-five languages. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; Half of a Yellow Sun, which was the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Best of the Best” award; Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck and the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. Her most recent work is an essay about losing her father, Notes on Grief, and Mama’s Sleeping Scarf, a children’s book written as Nwa Grace-James. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.