2013 book 133

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah
Another excellent novel from the author of the awesome Half of a Yellow Sun). Adichie manages to touch on cross-cultural assimilation, academic politics, blogging, family, relationships, blackness in America, and Barack Obama in a novel that travels from Nigeria to various other places and back again. Our main protagonist is Ifemelu, who's lived in America for thirteen years, writes a well-known blog on race, and is a fellow at Princeton--when she somewhat suddenly decides to return home to Nigeria. And it's also about the boy she left behind, now married with a child, and the paths that led them together and then apart. I guess that makes it sound like a romance, but it's certainly more than that. Both have the usual immigrant travails, and then some, and both stories are profoundly moving (Ifemelu's is more so, but more time is devoted to her). And I'll also say that excerpts from fictional writings in another book don't always work for me, but the entries from Ifemelu's blog are really well-done. The end is mildly overdramatic, but this is still really a solid novel, well worth a read. A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on May 14th.