Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reviewed President BarackObama's memoir, A Promised Land, forThe New York Times. Always a vocalfan of the Obamas (though perhaps more so Michelle than Barack), thereview is an admiring one. She praises his prose as ‘gorgeous’ and‘always pleasurable to read’ while discussing with scepticismObama's ‘savage self-questioning’, wondering whether suchquestioning is itself a defence mechanism developed by the formerAmerican president to deflect criticism by anticipating it. Her bookreview carefully adheres to the form. For example, after detailingObama's tendency to narrate every political decision with ‘a wateryconsidering of so many sides that resulted in no sides at all’, shebacks away from an extended critique of this facet of Obama'sgoverning style, beyond its quality as a narrative device. Adichiein her role as book critic, views Obama's sins as stylistic,avoiding discussion of specific policy. However, her review endswith a somewhat broader meditation on the grace and admiration weafford public intellectuals like Obama (and perhaps Adichieherself), writing,

Having recently finished reading Conversationswith Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I could not help butread these questions as being about Adichie's own emerging legacy aswell. In many ways, this collection of ‘conversations’ feelsentirely familiar to a reader versed in the general contours of thelast fifteen years of African literature on the global stage.Adichie repeatedly grapples with the ‘Image of Africa’ in the West,the question of including Igbo words in her writing, and the primacyof The Caine Prize for African Writing. However, reading theseinterviews chronologically, a portrait of Adichie that is bothinconsistent and self-consciously constructed emerges. Though shecontinually rejects the label ‘celebrity’ in favour of ‘publicperson’, (120) in many ways the interviews collected in this volumetell the story of a woman whose ambivalence towards the notion ofcelebrity is increasingly complicated by her own inclusion in thatcategory.