THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK(Short-story collection)

                 ~Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 

•Cell One

•Imitation

•A Private Experience 

•Ghosts

•On Monday Last Week

•Jumping Monkey Hill

•The Thing Around Your Neck

•The American Embassy

•The Shivering

•The Arrangers of Marriage

•Tomorrow is Too Far

•The Headstrong Historian

CELL ONE

In Cell One, a young man is imprisoned as suspect during the season of thefts and nebulous cults in the serene and secular Nsukka campus. There he would learn a hard lesson on stealing all the while cultivating virtues of sympathy and compassion. 

      Moving, sad and wryly funny.

IMITATION

A young woman unlocks a devastating secret about her long distance marriage between two countries. On moving back to Nigeria, she decides to permanently move back and reclaim her marriage. It is an intriguing, relatable piece capturing artworks like life-size Benin bronzes in all its remarkable artistry. 

A PRIVATE EXPERIENCE 

A muslim woman and a younger Igbo woman are confined in a damp, dusky building during a dangerous religious riot. There they share humanity, listening to each other’s stories and culture and language, all hoping for safety. In this story, stereotypes of ethnic disparages between cultures are challenged for here is a Hausa and an Igbo woman(who aren’t supposed to be close to one another) united together in mutual affection and humanity. 

GHOST

Gripping, humane and poignant. A story of a retired Mathematics professor and his nostalgia for his younger days. He reminisces on the vibrance and the once held possibilities of his Nsukka campus before the invasion of the Biafran Civil war. What makes it intriguing and sardoning is the fact that his two-year old daughter died during the war as well as the re-emergence of Ikenna Okoro—an interesting, conservative man who remained in the campus when the vandals had taken over. Even the surrounding buildings and administration of the university were all crashing down in peeling paint, pot-holed roads, unpaid pensions, failed administration. Thus, a befitting title infact “Ghosts”.

ON MONDAY LAST WEEK

       A deeply moving story about immigrant struggles in a mix of two cultures. Kamara, from Nigeria takes a job as a nanny for a rich American family, contorting to the nuances that characterize the strange American life, especially in parenting. 

JUMPING MONKEY HILL

     A story about a writers workshop held in Cape town in a hotel designated for its unique landscapes as ‘jumping monkey hill’. Ujunwa, a Nigerian writer finds herself in a mix of writers from different nationalities such as Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Senegal. 

     Funny and deeply-moving, with mocking honesty about what striving ladies face in many burstling cities like Lagos.

THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK 

   Another story on the immigrant aspirations and struggles. Akunna leaves Nigeria with great hopes for America from its glamorous depictions on Tv, for its sense of possibility. However, she is disappointed. First, from her Uncle who demands sex before he helps her ‘settle down’ and the low life and meager jobs which immigrants are left with. 

     She moves to Connecticut, where she finds love, regret, loneliness and triumph. 

THE AMERICAN EMBASSY 

   A sensitive, revealing and hopeful story of a woman whose husband, a journalist is killed for daring to criticize the Nigerian military government and her strive to seek asylum abroad. In the embassy, the author paints a scene of an urban-local setting, where huge embassy buildings are stacked next to open shacks and ramshackle sheds with pastoral wares, to the brutal high-handedness and ruthlessness of army soldiers. With a searing and profound empathy, she weaves an intricate, honest story of the hopeful aspirations of people who seek foreign visas in different countries abroad.

THE SHIVERING

   A young woman in Princeton finds herself devastated over a plane crash in which her Ex boyfriend, boarded. She meets Udenna—a pudgy, dark-skinned man, the authentic conservative Nigerian whom she develops an intimate, platonic relationship with. They pray together, eat, talk, laugh, drive to church, bond. She also learns of his sexuality—that he is gay. But however, the man’s sexual orientation wasn’t the main thrust of the story thereby humanizing even homophobic readers of this gay man whose rights there might once been in support of squashing.

      Funny, engaging and humanizing in all its truth and remarkable surprise.

THE ARRANGERS OF MARRIAGE 

     A story about what happens in many families in Nigeria where they plan and arrange unsolicited marriages for suitors deemed successful abroad.

However, when she arrives America she is shocked. First, by the smallness of her new husbands apartment, his demeanor and bad breath that smelled like the rubbish dumps at Ogbete market, and the American life with its blandly tasting over-packaged foods. In the end, she learns of her husbands fling with her neighbor and decides to divorce him once she gets her green card and other necessary documents to work in America.

TOMORROW IS TOO FAR

     A deeply poignant story of a woman mourning a very unfateful day in the summer of April, years ago. It appears, she had killed her brother, startling and alarming him with the fake sight of a snake(Echi-eteka) literally translated to ‘Tomorrow is too far’. Secrets and mysteries are revealed, suspense heightened leaving readers in waves of emotions as an aftermath. 

THE HEADSTRONG HISTORIAN

     A historical, deeply significant and compelling story with its roots in African culture and traditions. A young widow finds herself in a tussle with her husbands greedy brothers who scrounge off the inheritance of her late husband. Nwangba, resilient in defeating them sends her only son born after multiple miscarriages to school to learn the language of the white man’s courts. It was a missionary school washed in English orthodoxy and so when he returns, he becomes unrecognizable. He refuses to eat her food, partake in his age-grade activities describing them as pagan all the while preaching about a strange god. She sees the diminished curiousty in his eyes and wonders if perhaps, she had meddled with his destiny. 

     Her son marries a similarly overzealous Christian convert called “missus” by everyone and gives birth to her grandchild christened Grace but named Afamefuna. Afamefuna grows up to be a similar headstrong, culturally conscious woman who rejects colonial denigration reading about the brutal pacification and injustice done to its subjects. It was Grace who would go to courts and change her name from Grace to Afamefuna. It was Grace who would change her degree from chemistry to history after hearing about the story of Mr. Gboyega, the eminent Mr.Gboyega, chocolate skinned Nigerian expert, educated in London, distinguished expert on the history of the British Empire, who had resigned in disgust after the West African Examination Curriculum added history to the curriculum because he was appalled that African history would even be considered a subject. It was Grace who would write a book about The Pacification of Primitive Tribes: A reclaimed history of Southern Nigeria.

It was Grace who would divorce her husband when she gets fed up with his rapturous monologues thronged with nostalgia for his Cambridge days.

It was Grace who would imagine her grandmother chuckling in amusement and pride, at her granddaughter, this headstrong, bold and true reincarnation of hers.