Half of a Yellow Sun
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4.6 • 391 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • From the award-winning, bestselling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists—a haunting story of love and war. • Recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Winner of Winners” award.
With effortless grace, celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who has abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene.
Half of a Yellow Sun is a tremendously evocative novel of the promise, hope, and disappointment of the Biafran war.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Before writing Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explored Nigeria’s postcolonial history in this gripping novel. As the book’s interconnected characters bear witness to the ethnic and intellectual disputes that lead to the African country’s 1967 civil war, Adichie offers suspenseful glimpses into their grim future. Who can survive when hope and poetry become as scarce—and as valuable—as salt? Half of a Yellow Sun uses vivid scenarios to chart the devastating cost of the world’s apathy toward the conflict. We’re still haunted by the image of a bride who can’t stop eating her wedding cake even after bombs have destroyed the celebration.
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.
Customer Reviews
See AllSilently Complicit
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s writing touched a nerve in me when I first read “Americanah” so many years ago. Her storytelling in that novel hit too close to home. A too bitter reminder of the realities I have known as a Nigerian-born Black American. I have consciously avoided her books until now; when the overwhelming oppressiveness of a clown administration reminded me I was “other.” Though “Half of a Yellow Sun” precedes “Americanah,” I only discovered it recently when I decided to dip back into Adichie’s catalog.
This book being called masterfully written is a clichéd understatement. The prose, complex flow, character development, shifting perspectives, and the weight of the circumstances coalesce into a deeply gripping account of the Nigerian Civil War period. This recounting places Adichie on the same footing as Achebe. They both are national treasures and the Homeric orators of Nigeria’s stilted and violent march towards some idea of a whole.
“Half of a Yellow Sun” is expansive in scope but tight in its execution. The tome never feels insurmountable, and by the end, you hate that it ends. Then again, you know that the story cannot end and that it is just one of many that could be told of that time. Adichie pulls you deeply into the plot along with the character intricacies and envelops you in the ties that connect them all. The novel is personally enthralling; as if I was walking in my parents’ and grandparents’ footsteps.
It is also deeply heartbreaking in as many ways. The bitter reminder is that war destroys our humanity and dismantles the rules upholding civilization. It reminds me of my own parents’ journeys to where they are and how their marriage, in a tribally divided Nigeria, is even more amazing. This connection is possible because of Adichie’s ability to lend a perfect level of detail to everything. The food, music, mood, temperature, scenery, smells, and the mixing of languages all come to vibrant life across the pages. Adichie perfectly captures the swirling mix of mysticism, hope, fear, tension, and joy that is Nigeria.
She also manages to underscore the lingering sabotage of colonialism. The concurrent suffering of Black people across the world. One people, separated by slavery, war, and strife. All looking for a nation free of colonial influence. The brokenness of the African Diaspora is perfectly captured in the line: “I want this war to end so he can come back. He has become somebody else.” A bitter reminder of how Africa and Africans have been changed over the centuries by forces not their own.
Omo
I LOVE CHIMAMANDA. She wrote such a beautifully written, compelling, informative, soul tugging, and humorous work. God Bless Her Sah
Favorite
This is one of my favorite books.