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Americanah  By  cover art

Americanah

By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
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Publisher's summary

Shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2014.

From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a powerful story of love, race and identity.

As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze 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. Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a blogger. But after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face?

Fearless, gripping, spanning three continents and numerous lives, the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Americanah is a richly told story of love and expectation set in today’s globalised world.

©2013 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (P)2013 W F Howes Ltd

Critic reviews

“Actress Adjoa Andoh brings to life Adichie’s complex, beautifully wrought novel – which is both a love story and a nuanced analysis of political topics including systemic racism in America; immigration in the UK; and the class system in Nigeria.” (Vogue)

"One of the previous decade’s landmark novels [...] Andoh is a skilled, exciting narrator." (The Times)

"Andoh's rich voice and distinct characters and rhythm keep the listener engrossed.... Andoh has fun adopting a mocking lilt for Ifemelu's snarky blog entries.... [and] a more serious tone brings authenticity to the heartbreak of Obinze's London experience." ( AudioFile)

Featured Article: The Best Short Story Audiobooks to Immerse Yourself In Now


Short stories have had a huge impact on the canon of great literature. In fact, some of history's most revered novelists—Ernest Hemingway, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Louisa May Alcott among them—wrote short stories, which make excellent introductions to their work. Plus, these bite-size listens are the perfect way to get a big dose of literary inspiration even when you’re short on time. To get you started, we’ve compiled a list of listens.

What listeners say about Americanah

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Dazzling, Romantic, and Witty

Where does Americanah rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I heard an author's interview on NPR about this book, and I immediately knew I wanted to read it. I downloaded the Audible version, and was delighted immediately by the narration by Adjoa Andoh. The book carried me into the romance of a young couple who are separated by circumstance and opportunity, and are later reunited by chance and perhaps the inevitability of returning "home". What made me love this book is the main character, Ifamelu, an academician, a romantic (at heart) but also a realist. While experiencing life in America, Ifamelu challenges what other Americans, and Black Americans especially think about "Black women" and "Africans" generally. I loved her fictional blog, Raceteenth, and I wish it were real frankly. Her biting and acid criticism of race and perceptions of race among minorities was thought provoking, funny, and at times stunning. The main character's romances, her sexuality, and her reflection on love and companionship weaved together with the academic side of Ifamelu in a way that had me laughing and crying, and ultimately sad the book had to come to an end. I would liken reading Americanah to reading one my of other favorite novels, "Face of an Angel," by Denise Chavez. The intimacy you feel with the characters is unmatched, and when a book has you blushing about things you rarely will acknowledge, much less articulate to another, you know you have something special. Finally, I can't emphasize what a great narrator Andjoa Andoh is. About 80% of the books I listen to on Audible have boring or flat narrators, and so this narrator set Americanah on audio apart. The narrator took time to change her tone of voice, add inflection to separate the "sound" of characters male and female, American and non-American accented English, and to create a world of many different characters. I loved it, and I hope you will too. I look forward to more from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

What other book might you compare Americanah to and why?

Face of Angel by Denise Chavez. This novel and Americanah have a lot of depth, and elve into intimacies that are sometimes uncomfortable, but necessary to understand the whole person.

What about Adjoa Andoh’s performance did you like?

She adjusted her voice to embody each character, and that was my favorite thing. She brought the characters to life, and her inflection carried the passion that I felt between the lovers in the story.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

A yearning for home, an adventure apart

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117 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Smart, cool, perceptive, brilliant writing & story

Contemporary fiction is not a favorite area, but this book was on sale, and had high review stats. So, I listened.

Wow.

How is that we all have access to the same words in dictionaries, but some people can make amazing sentences. AND, use what they've learned from people-watching.

The narrator, too, turns this book into an art-form through an amazing performance of the characters. Humor shines through in all the right places.

There is nothing in this book that would have interested me - the main ideas, the characters in any of the countries - what happens in the process of immigrating and assimulating - the romantic thread - the racial issues - academia - the process of surviving economically. But, this book, this Audio Book, is awesome, amazing, and sucked me in.

I feel changed by the experience of this book, and expanded somehow.

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75 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Fascinating immigrant perspective - good story

American literature is full of immigrant perspectives - but these are mostly from the days of an Ellis Island stuffed full of European peasants fleeing economic deprivation in search of a better life. Americanah gives us a detailed look into a fresh perspective - African (Nigerian) immigrants coming to America or the UK in current times.

The main character, Ifemelu, and her college boyfriend, Obinze, both seek opportunity to grow and develop their lives outside the limitations of Big Man politics and limited economic opportunity in Nigeria. Ifemelu's experience includes fascinating details about what it's like to be a non-American black person in the U.S. and demonstrates the many faces of racism in the education system, in employment, and in the liberal intellectual elite. Adichie does a great job making the impacts of this racism real through the eyes of Ifemelu and her family and friends in the U.S. Obinze's challenges in the UK are more structural; in a post-9/11 world, it is difficult for a young, African male to get through the bureaucracy of EU/UK immigration, and he ends up returning to Nigeria and navigating the corruption as best he can to make his way.

Ifemelu and Obinze's star-crossed love life is the romantic plot intertwined with their immigrant experiences and plays out using conventional romance tropes, well-told. There are a couple of places where I didn't believe the storyline (Ifemelu's long silence to Obinze after a traumatic experience just didn't ring true but was necessary so that Obinze could develop his own plot complications.)

Is Americanah a great book? My personal standard for literature is that the crafting of a sentence is so breathtaking that you have to stop and stare - and I didn't find any of this high art in Americanah. Nonetheless, the book is extremely well-crafted - Adichie is a skilled writer with both an excellent eye for what's just under the surface, and fine writing technique. Her characters are extremely well-drawn, with lots of interesting detail and good development. The book is perhaps drawing so much attention because it tells such an important, under-told story and does it so well. As a reader, you care a lot about what happens next for each of these characters, and the book is a pleasure to read.

The narrator reads with a Nigerian accent, which takes a chapter or two to get used to, and ultimately adds a lot to the listening experience. Her inflections and expressiveness are superior to most narrators.

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56 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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  • KP
  • 08-18-14

Didactic to a fault!

This was a beautifully written book, and I enjoyed the story. The author’s keen insights into issues of immigration and race and what it means to be black in America AND in Africa were really interesting. It was particularly interesting to read about Nigeria from the viewpoint of some very well educated people. The main problem I had with the book is that it was too didactic. The author was critical of whites, critical of blacks - Nigerians, and Americans. That’s ok, and a lot of it was interesting, BUT it just went on too long. All of the preaching bogged the book down. Much of it could have been edited out, and the powerful main points would still have had as much or more impact.

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40 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Good read

I really enjoyed the writing of this book, the Lagos was so relatable as a Nigerian and a Lagosian but the biggest let down in listening to this was the fact that the reader is not Nigerian and could not speak the language when it needed to be and mispronounced just about every name. Her slightly British accent was a joy for the English majority but it would have been a much better experience if the reader actually spoke the language of the author. It really did make what should be a really really good book merely mediocre and makes me feel like I need to read the book in paper to capture the language for my self how the author really meant it.

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33 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Love this love story!

And it's so much more than a love story. Very intelligent, lyrical and insightful book about race relations and personal relations both within and without the United States. The Narrator was simply outstanding! Highly recommended.

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33 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Narrator enhanced this book tremendously.

Would you consider the audio edition of Americanah to be better than the print version?

The narrator brought alive the Americanah experience in a direct way that the written page would not have. She literally gave voice to the characters that enriched the narrative for me.

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32 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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Engaging, humorous story; Irritating narrator

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I highly recommend as a visual but not an audio read. The narrator does a fine job when the story is in the 3rd person or when she is speaking as the protagonist, but all her male and other-female characters sound like pre-adolescent boys. After so many hours of cringing when the narrator "turned male", I downloaded the e-book to enjoy the remainder of the story.

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29 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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couldn't listen to the narrator

I loved "Half a Yellow Sun" and was really looking forward to listening to "Americanah", but the narrator's different voices (particularly the American ones) were so screeching and nasally that I had to stop listening.

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19 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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What's not to love?

Days after finishing this book I'm still thinking about it. I loved it while I listened and love it even more now. Here's why:

First off, the writing is wonderful. It's witty, poetic, sad ... it travels and takes you places. I can't count how many things happened where I felt like I was there and the people were real. That's an achievement. The way blogging is incorporated is a great tool in this writer's hands. It feels like the way people have used letters before to change the voice yet make a point. It never felt contrived and always contributed to the story.

Second, it opens up new thinking. I am in a city where many Africans have settled - yet they remain distinctly apart from the black community. I understand it more than I ever have before.

Third, the narration is brilliant. There are a host of characters, nuances with pronunciation, complicated shifts and yet Adjoa Andoh handles it all with ease. Her performance makes this one of the best audio books I've ever heard. I can't imagine a better book club selection.

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18 people found this helpful