Americanah
Americanah is a 2013 novel by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, for which Adichie won the 2013 U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Americanah tells the story of a young Nigerian woman, Ifemelu, who immigrates to the United States to attend university. The novel traces Ifemelu's life in both countries, threaded by her love story with high school classmate Obinze.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
8mentions
7people
2014–2022years
88% recommend13% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Fellow African here, this reminds me of a book I read called Americanah.
Was a sweet story. Nigeria is cool.
Also a compiler enjoyer so this slaps. I love seeing people roll their own.
- Highly recommend her work! I've read Americanah and loved it. My partner read Half of a Yellow Sun and also really enjoyed it.
- There's a great line from the book Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie where the narrator of the book remarks that (and I'm paraphrasing here), there's loads of ways in the world to be poor, but apparently there's only one way to be rich - indulge in the same 'luxuries'.
- If anyone is wondering why he returned to where he was from I suggest to read the novel «Americanah» by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie which tells a story sharing at least one motif, perhaps. I suppose he felt alienated and was homesick even after decades of living in Europe.
- Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is very good. It's fiction, but semi-autobiographical. It's as much about living as a Nigerian immigrant in America as it is about Nigeria, but it's really well-written and gives a ton of insight into Nigerian culture (from a very specific perspective some might find grating.)
- Most recommended:
- Ted Chiang - Stories of Your Life and Others.
- Lawrence Weschler - Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees. A quality biography of Robert Irwin based on interviews over decades, and helps you learn to appreciate minimalist art to boot.
- Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
- Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions
- Burton G. Malkiel - A Random Walk Down Wall Street
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Americanah. Saw myself in several of these characters
- Nikos Kazantzakis - Zorba the Greek
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Also good:
- Jack London - John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs. Illustrates all of the interesting ways in which a person is tempted to drink: when someone else buys you one, when it's cold outside, ...
- Danny Bowien - The Mission Chinese Food Cookbook. Lots of stories between the recipes.
- David Byrne - How Music Works
- Meg Jay - The Defining Decade
- Ernest Hemingway - A Moveable Feast
- Magdalena Droste - Bauhaus 1919-1933
- Arimasa Osawa - Shinjuku Shark
- Zadie Smith - Changing My Mind
- Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart
- Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
- Marie Kondo - The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
- Haruki Murakami - The Strange Library. A fifteen minute read.
- Tim Ferriss - The Four-Hour Workweek. Good tactics for saving time; bad business advice.
- Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
- John Berger - Ways of Seeing
