The Thing Around Your Neck

Publisher's Summary

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie burst onto the literary scene with her remarkable debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, which critics hailed as "one of the best novels to come out of Africa in years" (Baltimore Sun), with "prose as lush as the Nigerian landscape that it powerfully evokes" (The Boston Globe); The Washington Post called her "the twenty-first-century daughter of Chinua Achebe". Her award-winning Half of a Yellow Sun became an instant classic upon its publication three years later, once again putting her tremendous gifts - graceful storytelling, knowing compassion, and fierce insight into her characters' hearts - on display. Now, in her most intimate and seamlessly crafted work to date, Adichie turns her penetrating eye on not only Nigeria but America in 12 dazzling stories that explore the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States.

In "A Private Experience", a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman whose dignity and faith force her to confront the realities and fears she's been pushing away. In "Tomorrow Is Too Far", a woman unlocks the devastating secret that surrounds her brother's death. The young mother at the center of "Imitation" finds her comfortable life in Philadelphia threatened when she learns that her husband has moved his mistress into their Lagos home. And the title story depicts the choking loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to an America that turns out to be nothing like the country she expected; though falling in love brings her desires nearly within reach, a death in her homeland forces her to reexamine them.

Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow, and longing, these stories map, with Adichie's signature emotional wisdom, the collision of two cultures and the deeply human struggle to reconcile them. The Thing Around Your Neck is a resounding confirmation of the prodigious literary powers of one of our most essential writers.

©2017 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (P)2017 Random House Audio

Critic Reviews

"Affecting.... The Africa in Adichie's collection isn't the Africa that Americans are familiar with from TV news or newspaper headlines. Her stories are not about civil war or government corruption or deadly illnesses. She is interested in how clashes between tradition and modernity, familial expectations and imported dreams affect relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)

"Haunting.... In the first of these 12 stories set in Nigeria and the U.S., a spoiled college student doing a stint in a Nigerian prison finds he can't keep silent when the police harass an elderly inmate. In another, what seems like an excellent arranged marriage is doomed once the bride joins her husband in Brooklyn and learns he's an overbearing bore. And for the lonely narrator of the title story, falling in love means 'the thing that wrapped itself around your neck, that nearly choked you before you fell asleep,' is finally loosened. Adichie, a Nigerian who has studied in the U.S., writes with wisdom and compassion about her countrymen's experiences as foreigners, both in America and in their changing homeland. Here is one of fiction's most compelling new voices." (Vick Boughton, People)

"Imagine how hard it must be to write stories that make American readers understand what it might be like to visit a brother in a Nigerian jail, to be the new bride in an arranged marriage, to arrive in Flatbush from Lagos to meet a husband or to hide in a basement, waiting for a riot to subside, wondering what happened to a little sister who let go of your hand when you were running. How would it feel to be a woman who smuggled her journalist husband out of Nigeria one day and had her 4-year-old son shot by government thugs the next? If reading stories can make you feel...caught between two worlds and frightened, what would it be like to live them? This is Adichie's third book, and it is fascinating." (Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review)

Haunting—But In a Good Way

I simply can’t get these snapshots out of my mind. Each story is enough and yet not enough! Bravo to both the author and the narrator.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Chima...The a solute Best

Loved everything about these stories except for the fact that they finished waaay too soon. Solid prose, as usual, visual story telling as I "SAW" every character come to life. Love Love Love

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Great collection of short stories

Like with all collections of short stories some are more interesting than others but overall a wonderful book and great narration with character voices and accurate accents.

Superb

An excellent compilation of African short stories that I never wanted to end. The narrator's voice flowed smoothly, creating savory images of Africa in my mind. Adichie never fails to deliver!

Storyteller

The short stories were slices of life, each with it's own implication and opportunity for understanding. I was caught up by her ability to tell a story and capture my imagination.

Wonderful and powerful

Striking - truly masterful, poetic storytelling from Adichie. And I loved Andoh's reading of it; she has a beautiful voice. I only wish the few American accents she portrayed weren't so grating... which may be the point.