Americanah
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A searing new novel, at once sweeping and intimate, by the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun: a story of love and race centred around a man and woman from Nigeria who seemed destined to be together--until the choices they are forced to make tear them apart.
Ifemelu--beautiful, self-assured--left Nigeria 15 years ago, and now studies in Princeton as a Graduate Fellow. Obinze--handsome and kind-hearted--was Ifemelu's teenage love; he'd hoped to join her in America, but post 9/11 America wouldn't let him in.
Years later, when they reunite in Nigeria, neither is the same person who left home. Obinze is the kind of successful "Big Man" he'd scorned in his youth, and Ifemelu has become an "Americanah"--a different version of her former self, one with a new accent and attitude. As they revisit their shared passion--for their homeland and for each other--they must face the largest challenges of their lives.
About this 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.
Format: Trade paperback
Pages: 608
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2025-09-30
Reviews
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A Parade Best Book of All Time
A TIME Top 10 Fiction Book of the Year
WINNER of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
FINALIST for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction
FINALIST for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction
SHORTLISTED for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times o The New York Times Book Review o NPR o Chicago Tribune o The Washington Post o Seattle Times o Entertainment Weekly o Newsday o Goodreads
"Americanah is most memorable for its fine-tuned, scathing observations about worldly Nigerians and the ways they create new identities out of pretension and aspiration. . . . Adichie displays much keen critical intelligence about how we can unwittingly betray our truest selves." --Janet Maslin, The New York Times Book Review
"Masterful. . . . An expansive, epic love story set in three countries, Adichie's fourth book pulls no punches with regard to race, class, and the high-risk, heart-tearing struggle for belonging in a fractured world." --O, The Oprah Magazine
"Superb. . . . A lush, big-hearted love story that also happens to be a piercingly funny social critique." --Vogue
"Adichie is uniquely positioned to compare racial hierarchies in the United States to social striving in her native Nigeria. She does so in this new work with a ruthless honesty about the ugly and beautiful sides of both nations." --The Washington Post
"A near-flawless novel." --Seattle Times
"Dazzling. . . . Funny and defiant, and simultaneously so wise. . . . Brilliant." --San Francisco Chronicle
"[A] knockout of a novel about immigration, American dreams, the power of first love, and the shifting meanings of skin color. . . . A marvel." --NPR
"A cerebral and utterly transfixing epic. . . . Americanah is superlative at making clear just how isolating it can be to live far away from home. . . . Unforgettable." --Boston Globe
"Witheringly trenchant and hugely empathetic . . . a novel that holds the discomfiting realities of our times fearlessly before us. . . . A steady-handed dissection of the universal human experience." --The New York Times Book Review
"'You can't write an honest novel about race in this country,' comments a character towards the end of Americanah. It's a slyly self-referential joke since, with her ambitious third novel, prize-winning author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie sets out to prove otherwise, placing race squarely, unapologetically and entertainingly centre-stage. . . . Written with flair and warmth, this impressively poised novel makes the most of Adichie's sense of wry detachment as an outsider without losing an affectionate humour for both her native Nigeria and adopted country." --Daily Mail
"An incredibly readable and rich tapestry of Nigerian and American life, and the ways a handful of vivid characters--so vivid they feel like family--try to live in both worlds simultaneously. As she did so masterfully with Half of a Yellow Sun, Adichie paints on a grand canvas, boldly and confidently, equally adept at conveying the complicated political backdrop of Lagos as she is in bringing us into the day-to-day lives of her many new Americans--a single mom, a student, a hairdresser. This is a very funny, very warm and moving intergenerational epic that confirms Adichie's virtuosity, boundless empathy and searing social acuity." --Dave Eggers, author of A Hologram for the King
"Adichie's great gift is that she has always brought us into the territory of the previously unexplored. She writes about that which others have kept silent. Americanah is no exception. This is not just a story that unfolds across three different continents, it is also a keenly observed examination of race, identity and belonging in the global landscapes of Africans and Americans. If Joyce had silence, exile and cunning for his defense, Adichie has flair, loss and longing. And Adichie is brave enough to allow the story to unfold with a distinct straightforward simplicity that never loses its edgy intellect." --Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin
"Adichie burst onto the literary scene in 2006 with Half of a Yellow Sun, her searing depiction of the civil war in Nigeria. Her equally compelling and important new novel follows the lives of that country's postwar generation as they suffer endemic corruption and poverty under a military dictatorship. An unflinching but compassionate observer, Adichie writes a vibrant tale about love, betrayal, and destiny. . . . [A] touching love story and an illuminating portrait of a country still in political turmoil." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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