Americanah

Americanah is a 2013 novel by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, published on 14 May 2013 by Alfred A. Knopf. It is Adichie's third novel and her fourth book overall, and it followed her acclaimed Half of a Yellow Sun. The title is Lagosian slang for Nigerians who return home after a spell in the United States, a double meaning that runs through the whole story.

The plot follows Ifemelu and Obinze, who fall in love as teenagers at a secondary school in Lagos, at a time when Nigeria is under military rule and many people want to leave. Ifemelu goes to the United States to study and there discovers, for the first time, what it means to be a Black person in a society organised around race. Obinze, the son of a professor, hopes to join her, but after 9/11 his visa application is refused; he ends up living illegally in London, under precarious conditions. The narrative moves between past and present across roughly fifteen years, combining detailed portraits of its characters with passages of social satire.

One of the novel's most discussed elements is Ifemelu's blog about race in America, written from the viewpoint of a newcomer who does not recognise herself in the categories on offer. The blog brings her fame and professional success, and through it the book questions the idea of a single Black identity and explores the differences between African and African American experience.

The novel was widely praised. It won the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the Heartland Prize from the Chicago Tribune, reached the shortlist of the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction in 2014, and appeared on many end-of-year lists. It became one of Adichie's most widely read books and has been translated into many languages. Its influence can be seen in later debates about migration, race and the African diaspora.