Americanah: A novel
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 • A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century
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
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
What Bookclubbers are saying about this book
✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say *Americanah* by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers a deep, nuanced exploration of race, identity, and immigration, vividly portraying Black e...
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
588 pages
What’s it about?
This novel is a love story, an immigrant’s story and a story of race in America.
What did it make me think about?
This is a book I wanted to love. It started off so promising for me, and parts of the novel were amazing. I found the main character smart, interesting, insightful and sometimes just harsh and hard to understand.
Should I read it?
I found the authors' commentaries on race in America thought provoking. Her observations on being a new immigrant to America were also interesting. Her ability to stand back and observe, and then write social commentary makes this novel worth reading. However be warned- the second half of the book got tedious for me.
Quote-
“There was a manic optimism that he noticed in many of the people who had moved back from America in the past few years, a head-bobbing, ever-smiling, over-enthusiastic kind of manic optimism that bored him, because it was like a cartoon, without texture or depth. He hoped she would not have become like that. “
If you like this try-
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyimi
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Very moving and powerful story about Ifemelu and Obinze, two young lovers growing up in Nigeria, who find themselves on different paths in life. Ifemelu heads to the States to study and chase the "American dream" that Obinze had wanted for both of them, only to be confronted with racial issues for the first time in her life. She starts a blog to talk about race and racism in America, becoming wildly successful but moving further and further away from Obinze, whose life took unexpected turns when he was not able to get to America.
After years in the States, Ifemelu decides it's time to return home, and their reunion is bittersweet and complicated.
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.