Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Hardcover

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Reader Score

88%

88% of readers

recommend this book

Critic Reviews

Good

Based on 16 reviews on

One of "The""New York Times"'s Ten Best Books of the Year
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
An NPR "Great Reads" Book, a "Chicago Tribune" Best Book, a "Washington Post "Notable Book, a "Seattle Times "Best Book, an "Entertainment Weekly" Top Fiction Book, a "Newsday "Top 10 Book, and a "Goodreads "Best of the Year pick.

A powerful, tender story of race and identity by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author of "Half of a Yellow Sun."
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. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion--for each other and for their homeland.

Book Details

Publisher: Turtleback
Publish Date: Jan 1st, 2014
Pages: 608
Language: English
Edition: Bound for Schoo - undefined
Dimensions: 7.80in - 5.00in - 1.30in - 1.15lb
EAN: 9780606367219
Categories: • Literary• Cultural Heritage• African American & Black - General

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," "Granta," "The O. Henry Prize Stories," the "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, and "Half of a Yellow Sun," which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, a "New York Times" Notable Book, and a "People" and "Black Issues" Book Review Best Book of the Year; and, most recently, the story collection "The Thing Around Your Neck." A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.

Critics’ reviews

Praise for this book

"What's as American as the invention of race? Self-invention. So we are reminded by Adichie's engaging third novel . . . 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. "Americanah" is social satire masquerading as romantic comedy. . . . Beyond race, the book is about the immigrant's quest: self-invention, which is "the" American subject. "Americanah" is unique among the booming canon of immigrant literature of the last generation (including writers Junot Diaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, Gary Shteyngart, Chang-rae Lee, Dinaw Mengestu and Susan Choi). Its ultimate concern isn't the challenge of becoming American or the hyphenation that requires, but the challenge of going back home. . . . Affecting." --Emily Raboteau, "The Washington Post"
"Adichie's brave, sprawling novel tackles the U.S. race complex with a directness and brio no U.S. writer of any color would risk. . . . There's no question on this or any novel's resolving [our] race sickness. If it's so hard to say or do the right thing, what is to be done? [But] "Americanah" brings a cleansing frankness to a scab on the face of the Republic." --John Timpane, Philadelphia" Inquirer"
"Big, moving, deeply provocative . . . A tiny pinprick in the giant balloon of hot air that has swollen around the subject of race in post-civil-rights-era America. Adichie's finely observed new book, which combines perfectly calibrated social satire and heartfelt emotion, stands with "Invisible Man "and "The Bluest Eye "as a defining work about the experience of being black in America. More than race, "Americanah "is about all the ways people form their identities: what we put on and what we take off, the things we accumulate and those we discard along the way. . . . Adichie is as precise on the details of contemporary American life as Updike or Fran

"Dazzling. . . . Funny and defiant, and simultaneously so wise. . . . Brilliant."
--"San Francisco Chronicle
"
"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
"
"Masterful. . . . An expansive, epic love story. . . . 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
"
"[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."
--"The 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
"
"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
"
"Gorgeous. . . . A bright, bold book with unforgettable swagger that proves it sometimes takes a newcomer to show Americans to ourselves."
--"The Dallas Morning News"
"Part love story, part social critique, and one of the best [novels] you'll read this year. . . . Characters are richly drawn. . . . Adichie digs in deeply, finding a way to make them fresh."
--"Los Angeles Times"
"Brave . . . "Americanah" tackles the U.S. race complex with a directness and brio no U.S. writer of any color would risk. . . . [The novel] brings a cleansing frankness to an old, picked scab on the face of the Republic. It's not healing, and it's not going away."
--"The Philadelphia Inquirer
"
"So smart about so many subjects that to call it a novel about being black in the 21st century doesn't even begin to convey its luxurious heft and scope. . . . Capacious, absorbing and original."
--Jennifer Reese, NPR
"One of the freshest pieces of fiction of the year. . . . Adichie's style of writing is familiar and personal. . . . An engrossing, all-encompassing read."
--"New York Observer
"
"Superb . . . "Americanah" is that rare thing in contemporary literary fiction: a lush, big-hearted love story that also happens to be a piercingly funny social critique."
--"Vogue
"
"A near-flawless novel, one whose language so beautifully captures the surreal experience of an African becoming an American that one walks away with the sense of having read something definitive."
--"The Seattle Times
"
"An important book . . . its strength and originality lie with the meticulous observation about race--about how embarrassed many Americans are about racial stereotypes, even as they continue to repeat them, about how casual racism still abounds."
--"The Economist
"
"Moving."
--"The""Huffington Post"
"["Americanah"] presents a warm, digressive and wholly achieved sense of how African lives are lived in Nigeria, in America and in the places between."
--"The""Financial Times
"
"Glorious. . . . "Americanah" provide[s] Adichie with a fictional vehicle for all kinds of pithy, sharply sensible commentary on race and culture--and us with a symphonic, polyphonic, full-immersion opportunity to think outside the American box."
--"Elle
"
"Winning . . . [Adichie] is a writer of copious gifts . . . breath[ing] life into characters whose fates absorb us. . . . She""shows us ourselves through new eyes."
--"Newsday"
"Adichie defines the sum of disparate cultures with new clarity, while questions of identity and love remain elusive as ever."
--"Interview "magazine