Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Thing Around Your Neck is a collection of twelve short stories exploring the experiences of Nigerians living both at home and abroad, particularly in the United States. Adichie portrays characters negotiating cultural expectations, family obligations, gender inequality, political instability, and the complicated realities of immigration. In the title story, a young Nigerian woman moves to America, where her hopes for a better life are challenged by loneliness, financial insecurity, and the feeling of being misunderstood. Other stories examine strained marriages, religious divisions, family secrets, and the gap between how people perceive Nigeria and how Nigerians experience their own country. With emotional precision and understated humour, Adichie explores the tension between tradition and modernity, revealing how migration and cultural encounters can transform people’s understanding of themselves and their relationships.

Americanah follows Ifemelu and Obinze, two young Nigerians whose love story unfolds across continents as they navigate migration, race, and the search for belonging. As a university student, Ifemelu moves to the United States, where she confronts the realities of being Black in a society that forces her to reconsider her identity. Through her experiences with relationships, work, and cultural differences, she develops a popular blog examining race and everyday life in America. Meanwhile, Obinze hopes to build a future in Britain but encounters a very different set of obstacles as an undocumented immigrant. Years later, Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, bringing with her a transformed understanding of home and the person she has become. As the two reconnect, they must confront the ways their experiences have changed them and consider whether their relationship can survive the passage of time. Blending romance with sharp social commentary, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explores race, immigration, class, cultural identity, and the complex meaning of home in an interconnected world.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, has been successful at everything until—betrayed and brokenhearted—she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin Omelogor is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America—but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve. Dream Count is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s searing, unforgettable story of these four women—a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself.