After her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, was longlisted for the Booker prize and winning the Orange prize in 2007 with Half of a Yellow Sun, the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie came to the Guardian book club to talk about her NBCC award-winning third novel, Americanah.
Adichie began by telling John Mullan why she chose to chart her heroine Ifemelu's time abroad in flashback – and how her decision helped to explore the idea of homecoming. Like Ifemelu, the novelist went to college in the US. She recalls how it was only in America that she experienced herself as "black", and how she came to see that for a black woman in the US even hair is political.
Reading list
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate)
