Product Description

A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as “the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,” Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed.

            With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor’s beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna’s twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another.           

           Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all. Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise and the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place, bringing us one of the most powerful, dramatic, and intensely emotional pictures of modern Africa that we have ever had.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #135547 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-12
• Released on: 2006-09-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. 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. (Sept. 15)
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From The New Yorker
Based loosely on political events in nineteen-sixties Nigeria, this novel focusses on two wealthy Igbo sisters, Olanna and Kainene, who drift apart as the newly independent nation struggles to remain unified. Olanna falls for an imperious academic whose political convictions mask his personal weaknesses; meanwhile, Kainene becomes involved with a shy, studious British expat. After a series of massacres targeting the Igbo people, the carefully genteel world of the two couples disintegrates. Adichie indicts the outside world for its indifference and probes the arrogance and ignorance that perpetuated the conflict. Yet this is no polemic. The characters and landscape are vividly painted, and details are often used to heartbreaking effect: soldiers, waiting to be armed, clutch sticks carved into the shape of rifles; an Igbo mother, in flight from a massacre, carries her daughter's severed head, the hair lovingly braided.
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From Bookmarks Magazine
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Purple Hibiscus (2003), was born in Nigeria in 1977 into a well-educated Igbo family. Drawing on her family's experience and Nigeria's history a decade before her birth, Adichie has written an ambitious, astonishing novel that succeeds on all levels. In her exploration of ethnic, religious, and class prejudices and genocide, Adichie focuses on the personal experiences of a few memorable individuals experiencing the drama of the conflict and the new nation. Her manipulation of point of view and time, from the years before and during the war, adds depth and perspective to her timely novel as secessionist tensions in the former Biafra persist.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Ambitious novel, lacks focus
I agree with Music Mom. It really drags - so much so, that I didn't notice the time switches as I plodded through it - and became utterly confused about the course of events. The time switches emphasise that the three "main" characters hardly change throughout the decade. Their circumstances alter but nothing really changes them psychologically. The time switches also emphasise that the novel really doesn't move forward at all. "Sweeping", "all encompassing", "ambitious" are adjectives I see employed to discuss the book. I agree, but add that it lacks a focus and a narrative thread to keep this reader interested. An interesting and worthy topic, but a novel in need of a good editor.

Page after page, simply wonderful
In Nigeria, devastated by civil war in the 1960s, we see the birth of the state of Biafra and relearn quite a bit of history. It is through the eyes of three different characters, whose personal tales intertwine, that history blends with their difficult paths:

Ugwu, a houseboy for eccentric university lecturer Odenigbo. Olanna, whose parents raise her and twin sister Kainene in the most privileged of backgrounds in Lagos; she leaves everything behind to follow Odenigbo as they are very much in love. Richard, a timid British national charmed by the Igbo culture and enthralled by Kainene, whose personality is an enigma for everyone. Obviously many other characters rotate all around and as we become acquainted with each of them, their presence is always pertinent and complementary to the main story.

I would not add anything else as the tale would be spoiled but I cannot refrain from strongly recommending this book as it is informative in many ways, its narrative flows beautifully, heartbreakingly, even comically at times and your heart is captured within the lines. It does not dwell on the violence of war even though it (the violence) is perceived in subtle but incredibly effective ways.

Read this book, you will not regret it. Quoting from my review title, simply wonderful, indeed.

BEAUTIFULLY RENDERED NOVEL
This beautifully rendered novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes to us in breathtaking details the polarizing 1960s of Nigeria. As with Purple Hibiscus Purple Hibiscus: A Novel Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie proves yet again that her voice is not one that is easily silenced. The centers around twin sisters, Olanna and Kainene, who, along with their family, get encompassed by civil war. All I really need to say is I couldn't put this book down! From the first sentence to long after I completed it, this book stayed with me. Some call this book a love story, others it's a fictional tale based on non-fictional events, but it really is about people enduring through some of the hardest times imagined. The honesty in the language, the way Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie created the dialog, all culminate to create this haunting tale. A+