Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi "Americanah"

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi "Americanah" - 2013

I read "Half of a Yellow Sun" earlier this year and really liked it. This is another novel about Nigeria even though a very different one. It takes place about thirty years after the events in the first book (Biafra war). The author tells the story about a young woman from Nigeria who emigrates to the United States and comes back years later.

This was an interesting book for me not only because of all the information you can get about Nigeria but also because it resembles my life. I didn't flee from a war-torn region but I have lived abroad for almost half of my life and I always hear comments by others who haven't who have a completely different idea about that, both people from my home country as well as those from my host country. So, for me this is not just a book about Nigeria but about immigrants and their torn-apart worlds. It is not as much a love story but a story about what you do if you end up somewhere where you are not wanted. It might as well have been a story of my life, without the love story gone wrong. Same as Ifemelu, I will go back to my own country one day and I am sure it won't be the same as it was when I left.

Someone mentions in the book that "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe was a great book but didn't help them to understand Africa but "A Bend in the River" by V.S. Naipaul did. I have not read the first book (now I have) but it's on my wishlist whereas I really can recommend the second one.

In any case, I did enjoy reading this book even though it touched a completely different side of Nigeria than "Half of a Yellow Sun" . I am looking forward to reading the author's third book, "Purple Hibiscus".

From the back cover:

"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?"