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 YearsIfemelu 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
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.
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner • One of the New York Times Book Review's Best Books of the Year • A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME
One of the Best Books of the Year:
The New York Times • NPR • Chicago Tribune • The Washington Post • The Seattle Times • Entertainment Weekly • Newsday • Goodreads
One of Time's 10 Best Fiction Books of the year
“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“
Americanah tackles the U.S. race complex with a directness and brio no U.S. writer of any color would risk.”
—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 “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.”
—The Seattle Times
