Americanah

Maravilhoso. Um romance de migração, entre a Nigéria, Estados Unidos e Inglaterra. Lembra "Emigrantes" de Ferreira de Castro, apesar de todas as diferenças de tempo, lugar e raça. Urge traduzir e editar em Portugal.

This book is several things interleaved.

There's a love story with fairly traditional elements of circumstances coming between the lovers.

There's clearly some autobiography, from an author whose own life gives her plenty of material.

There's a lot of exploration of the dislocation of being an immigrant and the ways in which the assumed community of people from the same place easily falls flat. I identified strongly with a surprising amount of that, given that my circumstances are very different from the characters'.

There's a mourning for Nigeria. Just as with Teju Cole's writing, I see so much of my Turkey in the author's Nigeria.

There's an extended essay about race, racism, and especially how those play out in the USA. This is mostly done very well--if the protagonist's blog were real I'd be a subscriber--but towards the end of the US section it starts to feel like a lecture is intruding on the story.

There's an interesting format experiment in which Adichie basically implements Brecht's ideas about giving away the story before telling it so that suspense doesn't interfere with the other things you're supposed to feel. Only Adichie does this far more deftly than Brecht, so it never detracted from the enjoyment of the story.

It does a surprisingly good job of carrying all these elements, albeit at times feeling a little overloaded. I enjoyed reading it and felt at times like it was really hitting hard.