Half of a Yellow Sun
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3.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
**DREAM COUNT, the searing new bestselling novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is out now!**
THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION ‘WINNER OF WINNERS’
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
‘A literary masterpiece’ DAILY MAIL
‘An immense achievement’ OBSERVER
In 1960s Nigeria, three lives intersect. Ugwu works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic lover, the lecturer. And Richard, a shy Englishman, is in thrall to Olanna’s enigmatic twin sister. Amongst the horror of Nigeria’s civil war, loyalties are tested as they are pulled apart and thrown together in ways none of them imagined.
Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s masterpiece is a novel about race, class and the end of colonialism – and the ways in which love can complicate everything.
‘A gorgeous, pitiless account of love, violence and betrayal’ TIME
‘Vividly written, thrumming with life … a remarkable novel’ JOYCE CAROL OATES
‘Adichie entwines love and politics to a degree rarely achieved by novelists’ ELLE
Reviews
‘Heartbreaking, funny, exquisitely written and, without doubt, a literary masterpiece and a classic’ Daily Mail
‘Stunning. This novel is an immense achievement’ Observer
‘A landmark novel. Adichie brings to history a lucid intelligence and compassion, and a heartfelt plea for memory’ Guardian
'Vividly written, thrumming with life … a remarkable novel. In its compassionate intelligence as in its capacity for intimate portraiture, this novel is a worthy successor to such twentieth-century classics as Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and V. S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River' Joyce Carol Oates
'Here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers’ Chinua Achebe
‘The character burrow into your marrow and mind, and you come to care for them deeply – something that is all too rare’ Daily Telegraph
‘A sane and compassionate new voice in an often strident world’ Financial Times
‘Adichie uses language with relish. She infuses her English with a robust poetry’ Helen Dunmore, The Times
‘A powerful account of the Biafran War, horrific and tender in equal measure’ Sunday Telegraph
'Absolutely awesome. One of the best books I've ever read' Judy Finnigan
‘I wasted the last fifty pages, reading them far too greedily and fast, because I couldn’t bear to let go … magnificent’ Margaret Forster
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria seceded in 1967 to form the independent nation of Biafra, a bloody, crippling three-year civil war followed. That period in African history is captured with haunting intimacy in this artful page-turner from Nigerian novelist Adichie (Purple Hibiscus). Adichie tells her profoundly gripping story primarily through the eyes and lives of Ugwu, a 13-year-old peasant houseboy who survives conscription into the raggedy Biafran army, and twin sisters Olanna and Kainene, who are from a wealthy and well-connected family. Tumultuous politics power the plot, and several sections are harrowing, particularly passages depicting the savage butchering of Olanna and Kainene's relatives. But this dramatic, intelligent epic has its lush and sultry side as well: rebellious Olanna is the mistress of Odenigbo, a university professor brimming with anticolonial zeal; business-minded Kainene takes as her lover fair-haired, blue-eyed Richard, a British expatriate come to Nigeria to write a book about Igbo-Ukwu art and whose relationship with Kainene nearly ruptures when he spends one drunken night with Olanna. This is a transcendent novel of many descriptive triumphs, most notably its depiction of the impact of war's brutalities on peasants and intellectuals alike. It's a searing history lesson in fictional form, intensely evocative and immensely absorbing.
