Lupita Nyong'o To Star in Chimamanda's Americanah Produced by Brad Pitt

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's award winning novel "Americanah" is going to be adapted for a big budget film by Brad Pitt and starring Oscar winning actress Lupita Nyong'o of "12 Years a Slave" fame.

The novel tells the story of young Nigerian couple in a romance that explores the cruelties and the humor of the modern immigrant experience on three continents and was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by the editors of the New York Times Book Review, won the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award (Fiction) and was shortlisted for the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

This will be the second novel by Chimamanda to be adapted for a film. Her second novel, "Half of a Yellow Sun" on Biafra was adapted for film and directed by British Nigerian writer Biyi Bandele, starring BAFTA winner and Academy Award nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor and BAFTA award-winner Thandie Newton and currently showing at movie theaters.


©Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima, 2014.

The synopsis of "Americanah"
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland.

Awards

● Winner of the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
● One of The New York Times’s Ten Best Books of the Year
● Winner of the The Chicago Tribune 2013 Heartland Prize for Fiction
● An NPR “Great Reads” Book, a Washington Post Notable Book, a Seattle
Times Best Book, an Entertainment Weekly Top Fiction Book, a Newsday Top 10 Book, and a Goodreads Best of the Year pick.

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