The Thing Around Your Neck Read online

  But on that day as she sat at her grandmother’s bedside in the fading evening light, Grace was not contemplating her future. She simply held her grandmother’s hand, the palm thickened from years of making pottery.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to Sarah Chalfant, Robin Desser, and Mitzi Angel.

  The following stories have been previously published: “Jumping Monkey Hill” in Granta 95: Loved Ones; “On Monday of Last Week” in Granta 98: The Deep End; “The Arrangers of Marriage” as “New Husband” in Iowa Review; “Cell One” and “The Headstrong Historian” in The New Yorker; “Imitation” in Other Voices; “The American Embassy” in Prism Inter national; “The Thing Around Your Neck” in Prospect 99; “Tomorrow Is Too Far” in Prospect 118; “A Private Experience” in Virginia Quarterly Review; and “Ghosts” in Zoetrope: All-Story. “The American Embassy” also appeared in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003, edited by Laura Furman (Anchor Books, 2003).

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope. Her story “The American Embassy” was included in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003. Her most recent novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, won the Orange Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; it was a New York Times Notable Book and a People and Black Issues Book Review Best Book of the Year. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. A recipient of a 2008 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.

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  Also by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Half of a Yellow Sun

  Purple Hibiscus

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain in 2009 by

  Fourth Estate

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  77–85 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 8JB

  www.4thestate.co.uk

  Simultaneously published in the United States by Knopf

  Visit our authors’ blog: www.fifthestate.co.uk

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  Copyright © Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2009

  The right of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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  EPub Edition © March 2009 ISBN: 978007321049

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