The Visit - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Reading Challenge Category: Free from Prime Reading

One night in Lagos, two former friends reunite. Obinna is a dutiful and unsophisticated stay-at-home husband and father married to a powerful businesswoman. Eze is single, a cautious rebel from his university days whose arrival soon upsets the balance in Obinna’s life. In a world where men are constantly under surveillance and subject to the whims of powerful women, more than Obinna’s ordered and accustomed routine might be on the line.

My Thoughts:

I really enjoy Adichie’s books as it always gives a different perspective to the lives we live in the UK and the USA. However, this short story takes that to a completely different level.
I didn’t realise at first that it was based in an alternate reality where women rule the world and men take on typical female roles. As the book progressed, I realised something was very awry with this world Obinna was living in.
It certainly gave a different viewpoint to life, and it was almost like ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ but in reverse. The men are penalised for having pleasure. They are criminalised for wanting to have a good time. They are discouraged from having careers. It made for fascinating reading.
It is a short book, and I would have liked to have been immersed in this world for longer and be given a chance to navigate the consequences of it being a female-dominated world.