Americanah

From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun comes a powerful, sweeping novel about love, identity, and the complex realities of race in a globalized world.

As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall deeply in love. Their Nigeria is ruled by a military dictatorship, and escape feels like the only path to a future. Bold and self-assured, Ifemelu leaves for America to pursue her studies—only to discover the sting of loneliness, the unspoken rules of a new culture, and, for the first time, what it means to be Black. Obinze, gentle and introspective, dreams of joining her but is denied entry post-9/11. Instead, he slips into an undocumented life in London, where danger and disillusionment wait at every turn.

Years later, Ifemelu has become a successful blogger, chronicling her frank and incisive views on race in America. Obinze, now a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, remains haunted by the past. When Ifemelu returns to Lagos, the spark between them reignites—but so do the questions of who they’ve become, and whether love can bridge the gap between the lives they've built and the dreams they once shared.

Fearless, intimate, and achingly human, Americanah is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s most dazzling novel yet—a meditation on belonging, homecoming, and the courage it takes to be seen.

One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.