Storyweb: Storytime For Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Americanah. Nigerian Chinua Achebe was the first African writer to publish a major novel in English – a novel in the colonial master’s language. Published in 1958, Things Fall Apart tells the story of Okonkwo and his traditional Igbo village and the devastating transformation it undergoes with the arrival of British colonialists. But the novel is every bit as much about Okonkwo as a tragic hero – his story regardless of time and place – as it is about the damage wrought by Europeans. Things Fall Apart demanded that the Igbo be taken on their own terms. Now almost sixty years later, Nigerian literature has expanded considerably. In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2013 novel, Americanah, the main characters live in Nigeria, the United States, and England. If not completely comfortable in all of these worlds – or indeed maybe not comfortable in any of these worlds – they nevertheless figure out how to move in these worlds. The two main characters – Ifemelu and O