The United States of Ambivalence

From the award-winning author of Beasts of No Nation and Speak No Evil, an insightful and deeply relevant collection of essays about America on the 250th anniversary of its founding.

Known for his piercing understanding of race in America, Uzodinma Iweala delivers a concise collection of essays which explore how race affects all our lives, most notably today amid rising bigotry and a raging culture war. A Black American of Nigerian descent now living abroad, Iweala is a medical doctor as well as a novelist, and he brings together his gifts for analysis and literary narrative in this thought-provoking and meaningful work.

Reflecting on the last decade, Iweala offers insights into the history of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as other fraught topics, including abortion, health care, sexuality, immigration, and politics.. Powerful and informed, mature in outlook and devastating in clarity and truth, the essays in The United States of Ambivalence capture the doubt, conflict, and uncertainty of being an American today.

“The hypnotic present tense, first-person narration draws the reader deep into the child soldier’s shattered psyche.” - Washington Post

“Haunting. . . . Iweala’s acute imagining of Agu’s perspective allows him to depict the war as a mesh of bestial pleasures and pain. . . . A startling debut.” - The New Yorker

“An outstanding first novel. . . . Resonant, beautiful. . . . Iweala’s book will be readily embraced by readers.” - Janet Maslin, New York Times

“Iweala’s arguments are well reasoned. By making generous use of the voices of many Africans, Iweala’s writing possesses an immediacy that makes his message powerful and compelling.” - The Boston Globe

“Uzodinma Iweala is receiving not just hype but praise from reviewers for the frighteningly convincing voice of a preteen soldier.” - New York Magazine

“Iweala gives his hero a voice that is literary yet poetic. . . . The acute characterization, the adroit mixture of color and restraint, and the horrific emotional force of the narrative are impressive. Still more impressive is Iweala’s ability to maintain not only our sympathy but our affection for his central character.” - New York Times Book Review

“This is a book about horror, but Iweala writes in a first-person, African patois, which gives it a lightness and wit, a buoyancy, which is very unusual considering what he’s writing about. It’s one of those rare occasions when you see a first novel and you think, This guy is going to be very, very good.” - Salman Rushdie