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
 
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 was a good read. I found the story dragging at points. Love the development of the characters and the emotions it elicited. My favorite part of the book was when young imflu and obzine meet. It read like poetry. I found myself feeling as I was sitting next to them on that hot night in Nigeria. I was not at the edge of my seat but the book has me engaged.

Reading this book I was enraptured by it, by the way the story unraveled.. But the epilogue of this book was very flat. I feel it left a lot to be desired, the ending was very empty. I had a very grandiose idea about how it would end but it just didn't do it for me. Chiamanda is still a wizard with words tho.

About the author

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, Financial Times, and Zoetrope: All-Story. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Half of a Yellow Sun, which was the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Winner of Winners” 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, both national bestsellers. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.