The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Paperback Book

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Rent The Thing Around Your Neck

Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Format: Quality Paperback

Publisher: Anchor Books

Published: Jun 2010

Genre: Fiction - Short Stories (single Author)

Retail Price: $17.00

Pages: 240

Synopsis

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie burst onto the literary scene with her remarkable debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, which critics hailed as "one of the best novels to come out of Africa in years" (Baltimore Sun), with "prose as lush as the Nigerian landscape that it powerfully evokes" (The Boston Globe); The Washington Post called her "the twenty-first-century daughter of Chinua Achebe." Her award-winning Half of a Yellow Sun became an instant classic upon its publication three years later, once again putting her tremendous gifts—graceful storytelling, knowing compassion, and fierce insight into her characters' hearts—on display. Now, in her most intimate and seamlessly crafted work to date, Adichie turns her penetrating eye on not only Nigeria but America, in twelve dazzling stories that explore the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States.

In "A Private Experience," a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman whose dignity and faith force her to confront the realities and fears she's been pushing away. In "Tomorrow is Too Far," a woman unlocks the devastating secret that surrounds her brother's death. The young mother at the center of "Imitation" finds her comfortable life in Philadelphia threatened when she learns that her husband has moved his mistress into their Lagos home. And the title story depicts the choking loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to an America that turns out to be nothing like the country she expected; though falling in love brings her desires nearly within reach, a death in her homeland forces her to reexamine them.

Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow, and longing, these stories map, with Adichie's signature emotional wisdom, the collision of two cultures and the deeply human struggle to reconcile them. The Thing Around Your Neck is a resounding confirmation of the prodigious literary powers of one of our most essential writers.


From the Hardcover edition.

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Reviews

BookLender review by Sarah on 2010-10-11 14:22:46

I really enjoyed this collection of short stories. It was fascinating to delve briefly into the lives of Nigerian people and their good and hard times. I enjoyed how Adichie really brought her characters to life even in such a short amount of space. I also enjoyed how she evoked such strong emotions without going to far and making it seem fake.