The following podcast contains explicit language.

Welcome to the Slate Audio Book Club's discussion of Americana by Chimamanda

Angozy Adich.

I'm Dan Cois.

I'm the editor of the Slate Book Review, and I'm here on Slate's DC Recording Studio.

Joining me here is a new addition to our audio book club rotation of critics.

Slate staff writer Jamel Bowie. Hey, Jamel. Hello. And joining us from New Haven is Slate Senior Editor Emily Bazelon. Hi, Emily. Hey, Dan. I'm excited that we're critics. Somehow I hadn't thought of that. What a good appellation. I mean, I was just going to call you guys cranks and getabouts, but I decided critics was nicer. I think I want to be a crank. Okay. Joining us is Slate, staff, crank, Jamel Bowie. As always with the audiobook club, we will be spoiling, of course, plot details that happen in this very plot-filled book. So if you were a person who cares about being spoiled, read the book first and then come back and listen to us. We'll wait. Just put us on pause. We'll be right here. We're not going anywhere. But, you know, if you don't care about spoilers, you just want to hear more about this book, listen on. Today, we are going to talk in this big overstuffed novel about Nigerians coming to America and England and then returning home. We'll talk about a lot of things because there's a lot of things going on.

We'll talk about amid other things, the relationship at the center of this book between

Ifamele and Obinze.

We'll talk about the novel's views on race in America and the way that it handles it, about

the return of both of those characters in Nigeria at the

book's end. I also want to talk a little bit about blogging and how pieces of a blog fit in a novel

and plus plenty of other stuff. But let's start, if you guys don't mind, with this star-crossed

couple at the center of the book. The book is a comedy of manners, and it's also an immigrant

drama, and it's also sort of a portrait of the new. The book is a comedy of manners, and it's also an immigrant drama,

and it's also sort of a portrait of the new Nigeria. But it seems to me that people are especially responding to this book, and I definitely especially responded to this book,

as like a very somewhat, like a somewhat simple love story of lovers separated by distance and time

and emotion and then brought back together.

But did you guys think that that love story held for you?

Was that what ended up driving you through the book?

Or did you find that sort of beside the point?

Emily, what did you think about those lovers at the center of it?

...