Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells the story of Ifemelu and Obinze, who fall in love as teenagers at a Lagos secondary school while Nigeria is under military rule. Ifemelu leaves for the United States to study, and there, despite her academic success, she has to work out for the first time what being black means. Obinze, the son of a professor, hopes to follow her, but after 9/11 he is refused a visa and turns instead to an undocumented life in London. In America Ifemelu becomes known for a blog about race. The title is Lagos slang for Nigerians just back from a stay in the States, and the novel won the fiction prize of the National Book Critics Circle.

Barack Obama included it in his best of 2018 list shared on Facebook, and Kapwing co-founder Julia Enthoven named it among novels she had recently enjoyed.