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Americanah

Americanah

A Novel
Contemporary LiteratureLiterary Fiction
Pages
791
Published
2013
Language
English

Synopsis

Follow Ifemelu, a young Nigerian woman, as she navigates life in the United States for university. The novel explores her experiences in both America and Nigeria, all while her relationship with her high school sweetheart, Obinze, is tested by distance and their separate journeys.

Prose complexity
7/10

Vibe

ReflectiveThought-ProvokingEmotionalRomantic
Fish Out of WaterComing of Age

Genres

Contemporary Literature Literary Fiction Romance

About the author

C
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, a New York Times Notable Book...

Characters

IfemeluProtagonist

A sharp, outspoken Nigerian woman who leaves Lagos for university in America and becomes known there for a blunt blog about race.

ObinzeProtagonist

Ifemelu's high school sweetheart in Lagos, who is denied a US visa after 9/11, works undocumented in London instead, and later returns to Nigeria as a successful property developer.

Aunty UjuSupporting

Ifemelu's aunt, a trained doctor whose comfortable life as a Nigerian general's mistress collapses when he dies, forcing her to rebuild her medical career alone in America.

Dike (Americanah)Supporting

Aunty Uju's American-raised son, a bright and funny child who grows into a teenager caught between how his peers see him as Black and how his mother insists he isn't.

CurtSupporting

A wealthy, easygoing white American who becomes Ifemelu's boyfriend; his effortless good fortune contrasts with the racism she otherwise encounters.

All characters in Americanah