Notes On Grief

“With raw eloquence, Notes On Grief… captures the bewildering messiness of loss in a society that requires serenity, when you’d rather just scream. Grief is impolite ... Adichie’s words put a welcome, authentic voice to this most universal of emotions, which is also one of the most universally avoided.”  -  The Washington Post

Notes On Grief is an exquisite work of meditation, remembrance, and hope, written in the wake of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beloved father’s death in the summer of 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world and kept Adichie and her family members separated from one another, her father succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure. 

Expanding on her original New Yorker piece, Adichie shares how this loss shook her to her core. She writes about being one of the millions of people grieving this year; about the familial and cultural dimensions of grief and also about the loneliness and anger that are unavoidable in it. 

With signature precision of language, and glittering, devastating detail on the page Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together her own experience of her father’s death.  In the compact format of We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, Adichie delivers a gem of a book — a book that fundamentally connects us to one another as it probes one of the most universal human experiences.