Americanah and Pericles

I finished off two excellent books this week, one fiction and one nonfiction.  Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie  is a sprawling, big novel that moves across continents and time to tell a story about two people who lose each other and themselves in the quest for opportunities in England and the US, only to find themselves again back home in Nigeria--one by choice, and another by force.  I am still not sure how I feel about the ending, but Adichie is a marvelous storyteller and a brilliant prose stylist.  I was seething with frustration with her main character who stubbornly refused to grow in any way--Ifemelu is a watcher and a judger of other people, and she uses her brain to critique rather than to build--until she is by herself in the United States. She is a character who changes fast, by leaps, even as she possesses a writer's detachment.


Mike Peed gives a terrific overview in his NYT review. 

I also finished Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy.  My edition appearse to be the 1990 edition, as I picked it up at a used bookstore.  In this book, Donald Kagan, of whom I am an unabashed fangirl, writes about Pericles in his various roles: Strategist, Statesment, Hero, Democrat, Imperialist, Peacemaker, etc. It is a study of leadership. Kagan is a historian, and he doesn't have that much to work from for Pericles: Plutach and Thucydides  are his main sources.  This books feels a little self-indulgent, and that's ok: Kagan is a fan of Pericles (there are worse leaders to admire), and Kagan allows himself to praise what he finds admirable. He can't escape the obvious problems of Pericles as a military strategist, and Kagan's assessment is sad and fair.   There are some bumps in the book, which are quite dated: Kagan doesn't have a terribly deep read of Marx or Plato, and he drubs both of them for their anti-democratic visions.  Still, his writing on democracy and the Periclean vision is breath-taking.

I'm traveling this week so there will be lots of time for reading.