Americanah
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
‘A delicious, important novel’ The Times
‘Alert, alive and gripping’ Independent
‘Some novels tell a great story and others make you change the way you look at the world. Americanah does both’ Guardian
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.
Once Ifemelu wins a scholarship to an American college she is thrown into a common migrant dilemma, that of trying to make ends meet as an illegal. Her desperation makes her so ashamed she cuts contact with Obinze. Obinze’s experiences once he manages to get to London are similar; he faces discrimination and poverty. Back home in Nigeria, neither one had experienced racism or really given much thought to how being black might affect their lives elsewhere in the world. Some of their experiences are brutal.
Reading this book will change the way you think about displaced people, even those who chose to leave their countries for a better life, never mind those for whom that decision was made by others. Americanah was number one for me for fiction in 2024. I passed it eagerly to my friends and it is still doing the rounds. Do yourself and your friends a favour and, if you haven’t already devoured Americanah, go out and find a copy. You won’t regret it."
