Americanah

eAudio

English language

Published Dec. 30, 2013 by Recorded Books.

ISBN:
978-1-4703-8892-8
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OCLC Number:
868028858

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4 stars (1 review)

From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a dazzling new novel: a story of love and race centered around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home. As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are leaving the country if they can. Ifemelu-- beautiful, self-assured-- departs for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze-- the quiet, thoughtful son of a professor-- 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. Years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu …

19 editions

Interesting discussions

4 stars

I was interested to see, when reading other reviews after having finished Americanah, that a lot of people didn't like the discussions and arguments about race or the imagined blog posts, preferring the Ifemelu-Obinze romance instead. Personally, once Ifemelu had left for America, I wasn't convinced by the apparent longings to resume their relationship and enjoyed reading the race discussions instead!

Americanah has a large cast of characters, some of which appear and reappear briefly so keeping track of everyone wasn't always easy. I did read the book over just a few days and think that if I had taken much longer, I could have gotten very lost. As a white Brit I did occasionally cringe at spotting things I have done or said being pulled up by Adichie. She has a wonderfully sharp eye and I love her ability to create such realism on the page. There are so …