In the spring my two friends and I revived our old book club which we started right after our university studies. It has been asleep far too long. It was decided we should read Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. We all finished the book back in May but we just now got the opportunity to lock ourselves in my summerhouse for a day and discuss it. Here is a short review of my thoughts.

“Princeton, in the summer, smelled of nothing…”

This is the very first words of the novel and I was hooked right away. Could there be a more classical or brilliant way of starting a story? It sure spoke to me and I had a good feeling when introduced to the main character Ifemelu. Born and raised in Nigeria we get to follow her moving to The U.S. for University studies. We also get to know her Nigerian boyfriend Obinze who is unable to accompany her to America and will find other ways to achieve his life dreams of leaving his homeland for better opportunities. Even though Ifemelu is without a doubt the protagonist of this story you sometimes get to follow Obinze from his point of view.

Ifemelu will experience racism in America and as an African woman she has a lot of thoughts about it. The result, a blog in which she very successfully expresses her views on the matter of equal rights in all its forms. She is successful in various areas of life in America and lives there for many years until one day, almost unexplainable, she decides to move back to Africa.  

You could of course argue the main theme in the book is racism but I actually think it’s about freedom. Having the freedom of shaping your own life. This might not only be hindered by the color of your skin but also in which country, or continent, you are born. The most powerful paragraph in the book, in my view, is one when Obinze is at a dinner party in London and the subject for discussion is whether the UK should take in refugees of war.

“Alexa and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all 
understood the fleeing of war, from the kind of poverty that 
crushed human souls, but they would not understand the
need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness. 
They would not understand why people like him, who were 
raised well-fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction, 
conditioned from birth to look towards somewhere 
else, eternally convinced that real lives happened in that 
somewhere else, were now resolved to do dangerous things, 
illegal things, so as to leave, none of them starving, or raped, 
or from burned villages, but merely hungry for choice and certainty.”

There lies a great depth in that paragraph and is a perfect starting point for discussion on political, psychological and philosophical matters connected to freedom and what we can do with what we have, who we are or where we happen to be born.

I think this is a great story and an important one. It is also very well written. At times the language is brilliant. At times, in certain chapters, I found the novel a little stretched out, almost to the point where I lost interest. The magic is in the details, but there cannot be too many details. I highly recommend this book, it couldn’t be more relevant in the current political landscape.

P. Hydén