The Thing Around Your Neck

By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh

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 12 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.

©2017 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (P)2017 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Affecting.... The Africa in Adichie's collection isn't the Africa that Americans are familiar with from TV news or newspaper headlines. Her stories are not about civil war or government corruption or deadly illnesses. She is interested in how clashes between tradition and modernity, familial expectations and imported dreams affect relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)

"Haunting.... In the first of these 12 stories set in Nigeria and the U.S., a spoiled college student doing a stint in a Nigerian prison finds he can't keep silent when the police harass an elderly inmate. In another, what seems like an excellent arranged marriage is doomed once the bride joins her husband in Brooklyn and learns he's an overbearing bore. And for the lonely narrator of the title story, falling in love means 'the thing that wrapped itself around your neck, that nearly choked you before you fell asleep,' is finally loosened. Adichie, a Nigerian who has studied in the U.S., writes with wisdom and compassion about her countrymen's experiences as foreigners, both in America and in their changing homeland. Here is one of fiction's most compelling new voices." (Vick Boughton, People)

"Imagine how hard it must be to write stories that make American readers understand what it might be like to visit a brother in a Nigerian jail, to be the new bride in an arranged marriage, to arrive in Flatbush from Lagos to meet a husband or to hide in a basement, waiting for a riot to subside, wondering what happened to a little sister who let go of your hand when you were running. How would it feel to be a woman who smuggled her journalist husband out of Nigeria one day and had her 4-year-old son shot by government thugs the next? If reading stories can make you feel...caught between two worlds and frightened, what would it be like to live them? This is Adichie's third book, and it is fascinating." (Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review)

Fantastic stories

This book was such a gift because each story within it was different. It was as if I read many different books. I loved the narration too. The stories vary from sad to heartwarming to funny. I highly recommend this book.

Masterful. Again.

Adichie is simply remarkable. This book is yet more proof. And it was read with flair and nuance in this audiobook, which only added to the impact I felt while the stories captivated me word by word.

Wonderful and powerful

Striking - truly masterful, poetic storytelling from Adichie. And I loved Andoh's reading of it; she has a beautiful voice. I only wish the few American accents she portrayed weren't so grating... which may be the point.

Mixed feelings about the audiobook

All of the stories are very well-written and I liked hearing them performed because hearing them in the accent in which they were written was an experience I could not create reading them in a physical book. However, the breaks between the stories was so brief that I sometimes had a difficult time telling where one story ended and another began, so I feel like the impact of each story was a little lost on me. I would almost like to read the book again in print so I could do the stories justice.

Extraordinary

Great imagery
Narration was better than my attempt at reading the name's. Great voice actor ands characterizations

Hey set of emblematic short stories by a great writer.

Many facets of Nigerian and Nigerian American life are explored and much more with a depth and detail and soulfulness that exults the spirit and informs the mind.

Beautiful collection of short stories

As an audiobook, it took me a little while to realize each chapter was a short story and the characters wouldn’t be revisited but once I did, I felt fully immersed in each one and loved getting a little snapshot of what life can look like for different people from Nigeria. Some will make you smile, others angry and sad. Overall, a great book and experience.

Storyteller

The short stories were slices of life, each with it's own implication and opportunity for understanding. I was caught up by her ability to tell a story and capture my imagination.

Heart wrenching stories

love it! its not necesarily a happy book, but its insightful and beautifully narrated. It invites the listener to reflect on intentions of human nature and the very flawed results of good intentions in conflicting scenarios. I listned to it during my long runs and often had to stop and take in some moments. truly beautiful

Amazing

Adichie's words send me on a journey during each story! I become more and more curious about my culture from reading her works and I hope to follow in her footsteps to paint a picture of different cultures