Notes on Grief cover art

Notes on Grief

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Notes on Grief

By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Narrated by: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £7.99

Buy Now for £7.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

A devastating essay on loss and the people we love from the bestselling author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun.

'Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language'

On 10 June 2020, the scholar James Nwoye Adichie died suddenly in Nigeria.

In this tender and powerful essay, expanded from the original New Yorker text, his daughter, a self-confessed daddy's girl, remembers her beloved father. Notes on Grief is at once a tribute to a long life of grace and wisdom, the story of a daughter's fierce love for a parent, and a revealing examination of the layers of loss and the nature of grief.

©2021 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Art & Literature Authors Fatherhood Grief & Loss Mental Health Awareness Parenting & Families Personal Development Relationships Grief

Listeners also enjoyed...

Zikora cover art
Purple Hibiscus cover art
So Late in the Day cover art
The Book of Fate cover art
Blood cover art
Four Girls from Berlin cover art
Don't Cry for Me cover art
Growing Up X cover art
Remember Me? cover art
How to Forget cover art
Things I Wish I Knew Before My Mom Died cover art
Worth cover art
The Beauty of What Remains cover art
Messages from Above cover art
Broken from Parent Loss? cover art
What My Mother and I Don't Talk About cover art

Critic reviews

‘Both emotional and austere, a work of dignity and of unravelling’ Guardian

‘With raw eloquence, Adichie’s observations have, simultaneously, an academic detachment and an inescapable anguish at being “in the centre of this churning” with “porous edges that there is no way through” … Notes on Grief is both achingly personal and stunningly familiar to anyone who has felt that scattering’ Independent

An exquisite howl of pain written in the aftermath, last year, of the unexpected death of her father’ Telgraph

Notes on Grief is a moving account of a daughter’s sorrow and it is also a love letter to the one who has gone. … She is saying don’t go and she is saying goodbye and she is also saying sorry’ Observer

In 30 short sections, Notes on Grief lays a path by which we might mourn our individual traumas among the aggregate suffering of this harrowing time.New York Times

‘Feels raw, even for a book about grief … It is no salve for her own grief, but Adichie’s brave observance of her own pain, will be a gift to those also suffering their first year of loss in these strange timesiNews

‘When you send a great writer into the valley of the dead, the reportage is better quality. In 1961 CS Lewis wrote A Grief Observed of the year after the death of his wife; in 2005 Joan Didion wrote The Year of Magical Thinking about the same time span after the death of her husband. Into this tradition falls Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie … For fans of the famously private Adichie – this is fascinatingly intimate. It is also delivered in the most readable, tender bites for any of the many of us whose attention has been shot by the harrowing of this past year’ The Times

All stars
Most relevant
I can't write any more. I miss my father. I both needed and wish I hadn't listened to this.

I feel seen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Notes on Grief is a short listen, but it's not necessarily an easy one. It is a series of short notes about the death of the author's father and how she moved through the beginning stages of her grief. It's touching and relatable, which brought back the emotions of some of my own losses.

I gave it an overall 4 stars because I'm not sure I would listen to it again. The performance was lovely, and it is not an easy topic to sit with.

A meditation on grief

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Your notes reminds me a lot of things about my father and I am grateful.

Thank you.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Grief is such a personal experience. I found comfort in listening to this beautifully told personal experience. Thank you for sharing.

Achingly beautiful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

So beautifully written and performed. You must listen to this if you want to connect with your own grief through the words of another. My first listen to a book by Chimamanda after hearing her speak with such wisdom on the radio about freedom of speech. An incredible woman.

A touching portrayal of grief

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

See more reviews