What Napoleon Could Not Do

By DK Nnuro

Publisher Description

One of the Books Barack Obama Is Reading This Summer
One of Vulture’s Best Books of 2023
One of Goodreads’ Buzziest Debut Novels of 2023
One of Essence’s 31 Books You Must Read
One of the most anticipated books by Town & Country and Elle

America is seen through the eyes and ambitions of three characters with ties to Africa in this gripping novel

When siblings Jacob and Belinda Nti were growing up in Ghana, their goal was simple: to move to America. For them, the United States was both an opportunity and a struggle, a goal and an obstacle.

Jacob, an awkward computer programmer who still lives with his father, wants a visa so he can move to Virginia to live with his wife—a request that the U.S. government has repeatedly denied. He envies his sister, Belinda, who achieved, as their father put it, “what Napoleon could not do”: she went to college and law school in the United States and even managed to marry Wilder, a wealthy Black businessman from Texas. Wilder’s view of America differs markedly from his wife’s, as he’s spent his life railing against the racism and marginalization that are part of life for every African American living here.

For these three, their desires and ambitions highlight the promise and the disappointment that life in a new country offers. How each character comes to understand this and how each learns from both their dashed hopes and their fulfilled dreams lie at the heart of what makes What Napoleon Could Not Do such a compelling, insightful read.

20 Reviews

3.0

Mari_M

bookswith.janel

Sarita

Adele

Adanma Reads

“The experience of reading this book was thoroughly unenjoyable. It started out interesting, with a sense of dry humour that I found amusing. Very quickly I realized there was no humour in this book at all. Most characters harbour a deep misery with no points of joy, growth, reflection, hope or anything to make reading their perspectives slightly less painful. Things happen in the book for no reason and there is an excruciating level of detail given to scenes that added nothing of value to the story. I should have stopped reading this book before the halfway mark but since Obama recommended it I kept hoping I would get to some brilliant or meaningful passage that would make it worthwhile. That, unfortunately, did not happen.”

About DK Nnuro

DK Nnuro is a Ghanaian-born writer and is a graduate of Johns Hopkins and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has taught novel writing at the University of Iowa and is currently curator of special projects at the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.