Half of a Yellow Sun

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Paperback, 2007

Status

Available

Call number

823.92

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Harper Perennial (2007), Paperback, 448 pages

Description

A haunting story of love and war from the best-selling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists. 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.… (more)

Media reviews

BookLoons

While there are disturbing scenes, the writing is superb, and Adichie puts a human face on war-torn Africa. The characters are authentic, the story is compelling. It is a worthwhile read, which will linger in your thoughts long after you turn the last page.

User reviews

LibraryThing member CBJames

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is not about the Biafra war. It's a family drama set before and during the Biafra war. It is to Ms. Adichie's great credit that the reader does not have to know anything about the setting or the events of the war; her story will tell us all we need

to know without trying to teach us outright.

There are five main characters. Central to the story are two sisters, twins, Olanna and Kainene, daughters of privilege with very wealthy parents and the best educations money can buy. Olanna gives up her wealth to become the mistress of Odenigbo, a passionate, young professor who holds regular salons where the issues of the day and plans for the future of post-colonial Nigeria are discussed. Kainene takes an Englishman, Richard, as her lover. Richard, who is white, can move among the inner circle of the Europeans who continue to live in Nigeria after Independence. He is also fluent enough in African languages and customs to achieve a quasi-insider status among Kainene's circle. The fifth character is Ugwu, Odenigbo's houseboy, who provides a window into village life and the lives of the lower classes in 1960's Nigeria.

The family drama that plays out among these five characters would be sufficient to fill a lesser novel. But this story is set in 1960's Nigeria, and the characters are all Igbo, even Richard initially stayed in Africa to study Igbo artifacts. In the 1960's, violence broke out between the largely Christian Igbo in Southern Nigeria and the Muslim Huasa in the north. The Igbo were brutally massacred in several northern locations and forced to flee the the southern part of the country. In response, they declared independence, and set up the country of Biafra. Nigeria, went to war to reunite the country and bring the land of Biafra, and the oil underneath it, back into the fold. Nigeria was supported by most of the world including England and Russia. Biafra was officially recognized by only a handful of African nations and never relieved much more than humanitarian support, and not very much of that. In spite of this, the tiny nation managed to survive for three years before finally surrendering to Nigeria.

I am not expert enough to comment on Ms. Adichie's presentation of Biafra's history, but as far as the novel goes, I don't think it matters if she got all of the details correct. The broader picture is accurate, and it's the novelistic details that really matter here--the story of how one family tried to survive famine, war and each other while the rest of the world largely turned its back and looked away.

Half of a Yellow Sun is a big novel, in the 19th century sense of the word. Ms. Adichie takes her time introducing the cast of characters to us. Each of the initial chapters is devoted to one or two characters, giving us a chance to really get to know one before we meet the next. Ms. Adichie takes her time introducing the war, as well. The book is divided into four sections that go back and forth between the early sixties, years before the war began, and the late sixties when the war took place. This works to help make an unbearable subject bearable. We need to know the what the characters and their lives were like before the war began to fully appreciate what happened and how the war changed them. The Biafran war itself is rightly remembered, when it is remembered, as one of the great horrors of the 20th century. Telling that story for 200 plus pages would make for very difficult reading. (Ms. Adichie would surely lose most of the members of my book club in the process.) The third part of the book flashes back from wartime to the more peaceful early sixties. But make no mistake, this is not a book that shys away from its subject matter. Each of the two sisters, Olanna and Kainene witness a very specific event that haunts them throughout the rest of the novel. Ms. Adichie is able to drive home all the terrible crimes of the Biafra war through these two events and through the changes Ugwu undergoes once he is conscripted to fight for Biafra.

I was struck by how much Half of a Yellow Sun reminded me of what I like most about Olivia Manning's Balkan and Levant Trilogies. Manning's six novels are about a British couple who spend World War II in civilian jobs, he is a professor, in Yugosalvia, Greece and Egypt, one step ahead of the fighting. They are set during wartime, but they are really the portrait of a marriage. What's memorable about Ms. Manning's work and about Half of a Yellow Sun is the characters, their lives, their loves, their struggle to survive and to stand for their principles under great duress. Both authors write to pay tribute to the people they depict, but Ms. Adichie also writes to pay tribute to an idea, Biafra, to remind us what happened there, to make sure the world does not forget.

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LibraryThing member lit_chick

“Red was the blood of the siblings massacred in the North, black was for mourning them, green was for the prosperity Biafra would have, and, finally, the half of a yellow sun stood for the glorious future.” (352)

Adichie illuminates Biafra’s struggle in the late 1960s to establish itself as an

independent republic in southeastern Nigeria. Five main characters share their experience of the turbulent decade: Ogdenigbo, a revolutionist and university professor; Olanna, his wife, a beautiful young sociologist from a privileged background; Ugwu, their teenaged houseboy; Richard, an English expat and writer, who falls in love with Olanna’s fraternal twin, the cynical and obdurate Kainene. The war, which begins with promise and hope, and the feeling that “it were liquid steel instead of blood that flowed through their veins, as though they could stand barefoot over red-hot embers." (205) – will be a grave disappointment. Indeed, before it is defeated and re-integrated into Nigeria, Biafra will come to be known on the world stage for famine and devastation:

"Starvation was a Nigerian weapon of war. Starvation broke Biafra and brought Biafra fame and made Biafra last as long as it did. Starvation made the people of the world take notice … and made parents all over the world tell their children to eat up. Starvation propelled aid organizations to sneak-fly food into Biafra at night … Starvation aided the careers of photographers. And starvation made the International Red Cross call Biafra its gravest emergency since the Second World War." (296)

This is not to say that the novel is in any way gratuitously morbid, but Biafra’s reality is disturbing. For my part, I was completely drawn into Half of a Yellow Sun. As a young child growing up in Canada, I vividly remember photographs of starving Biafran children with their swollen bellies. I was one of those children whose parents told to “eat up.” But that is all I knew or remembered about Biafra’s agonizing struggle. Adiche’s performance here is more than worthwhile – heartbreaking, beautiful, and compassionate. Highly recommended.

"There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable." (435)

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LibraryThing member deebee1

A portrayal of the crippling civil war following the secession of the Igbo people to form the independent nation of Biafra in eastern Nigeria in the 1960s.

I bought this book because I was intrigued by the many raves and the recommendations in LT, but i'm afraid i belong to the tiny minority who

are lukewarm to the novel, not finding it an exceptional work. The theme is without doubt noteworthy, and we feel the misery, the loss, the brutality of war, but Adichie's approach and treatment of the subject didn't leave much of an impact overall.

I didn't like that the book didn't seem to know what to get at even after 150 pages. It does get a bit better, and picked up much later but only towards the end. We meet the characters often, we see what's happening in their lives, it gives us a semblance of knowing them, but we never get to know them deeply because they do not engage us, we do not see into their psyche. Also, Adichie perhaps in her attempt to depict the "humanness" of the main characters (she calls it "emotional truth") overemphasizes their weakness instead so that they become very irritating -- for example, the characterization of Richard, the white man, as the spineless, needy and sniveling type, is repeated a lot of times that it becomes well, boring. Same thing with Olanna (one of the twin sisters) -- Adichie doesn't seem to have a very clear idea of how to portray her. I also found it disconcerting that the book doesn't give the reader the context, a background of events (historical and political) before the war unleashed -- the anchor is just not there, the reader gropes for an understanding but doesn't find it (in an almost 500-page book at that). Those many meetings by the academics and intellectuals at Odegnibe's house would have been very good venues for the author to provide this necessary background, but Adichie did not explore this -- we know what drinks these people liked, what hobbies they had, we know they made a lot of noise but we never get to know their opinions, their ideologies, their politics -- and they were supposed to represent the core intellectual and revolutionary elite on the verge of momentous events. Somehow it just doesn't connect.

Overall, i felt there was a lot of "noise" in this novel, a hesitation to challenge the reader to think, to reflect, there is plenty of skirting around without touching on a core theme, a lack of focus and depth. And she didn't seem to know how to end the book either...it seems to want to project uncertainty (with Keinene still missing) but is uncertain how to go about it, quite weak i should say. I'm glad I read it though -- it made me want to learn more about Biafra.

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LibraryThing member roblong

Gets lots of good reviews but I'm afraid this isn't one of them - the history was really interesting (I knew nothing about the war beforehand), but the characters didn't really grab me and without that the novel was really flat. Not terrible, but at the same time this was the first book in a while

I've thought about not finishing.

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LibraryThing member cbl_tn

If you want to learn about the short-lived Republic of Biafra, you could turn to a history or reference work for the facts. If you want to know what it felt like to live there, read Half of a Yellow Sun. The novel covers the decade of the 1960s, first in a newly independent Nigeria and then in the

Republic of Biafra, which declared its independence from Nigeria in 1967. The story alternates between three perspectives: that of Ugwu, a teenage houseboy newly transplanted from his village to a university town; that of Olanna, a beautiful woman from a privileged background who is in love with a revolutionary university professor; and Richard, an expat from the U.K. who falls in love first with Igbo culture and then with Kainene, Olanna's non-identical twin. Ugwu longs for his master, Odenigbo's respect. Richard longs for Kainene's love. Olanna wants the love and approval of both her lover Odenigbo and her twin Kainene, but it seems like it's not possible to have both at once.

I was hesitant to read a novel about such bleak topics as war and famine, thinking it would be too emotionally and psychologically heavy for me to read. My fears were unfounded. While the characters faced some horrible situations, they were strong and resilient. The conditions they faced during the war exposed both their weaknesses and their virtues. Although the three central characters came from very different backgrounds, they had in common a high value of education and literature. More than anything else, I think the belief in the importance of literature and learning is what connected me to the characters in the book. Highly recommended.

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LibraryThing member drachenbraut23

“Red was the blood of the siblings massacred in the North, black was for mourning them, green was for the prosperity Biafra would have, and, finally, the half of a yellow sun stood for the glorious future.” The colours of the Biafran flag

Half of the Yellow Sun is set in Nigeria and tells of

the events before and during the Biafran War. Although, these events provide the essential context to the novel, they do not take away the themes of the central story. I guess, like a lot of people I had little knowledge of the Biafran War except for the images of haunted and starving children, used often by the Media to raise awareness of world hunger.

This is one of those books which suck you in from the moment you open the first page and start reading. At least that is what it was like for me. I thought that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie managed to create a daunting, complex and deeply moving novel. In a great story telling fashion she weaves the lives of five characters during this tumultuous and horrid time together and shows us through their eyes and their surroundings the complex social, political and religious problems of that time. She tells the story from alternating viewpoints by three of the main characters – Ukwu, Olanna and Richard but the story also jumps backward and forth between the early 60’s and late 60’s This structure of the story needed some time getting used to, as I initially thought that it interrupted the flow of the story and somewhat left me during the second part with the thinking that I had missed something, but this was all rectified in the third part.

First we have the beautiful, compassionate and sensitive Olanna with a degree in sociology, daughter of a wealthy high society Igbo family, a life Olanna resents, she leaves her rich environment to live with the intellectual, eccentric and revolutionary Mathematician Odenigbo in Nsukka the Nigerian University town. Not to forget Ukwu who is 13 years old when he comes from a rural impoverished village to work as a houseboy for Odenigbo. It becomes very fast apparent that Ukwo has got a quick mind, so Odenigbo his master educates him in etiquette and sends him to school, as he learns and grows more confident – in his roles as houseboy and student - Ukwu becomes a valued member of the family. In response Ukwu becomes fiercely loyal to Odenigbo and Olanna and tries to step into his masters footsteps. At their home in Nsukka they have frequent gatherings with their friends and alcohol and food mingle with lively discussions about politics and poetry. Then we have got Richard a shy, troubled British idealist who comes to Nigeria in search of traditional Igbo art and to find his identity, in Lagos he meets the enigmatic, pragmatic, cynical and rational Kainene, Olanna’s unlikely twin sister. Olanna is beautiful but where Kainene lacks her good looks in contrast she is efficient and ruthless. She is the “son” of her father who oversees all their business affairs. However, after falling in love with Kainene, Richard finds himself taking up the cause for Biafra and becomes a war correspondent to help the people. He also tries – with little success – to carry on writing a book about the Igbo. In the end he feels “It is not my war to write about”.

These are the people we follow through their initial innocent and optimistic times of friendship, love and betrayals, then through the war, with their grief, losses, broken dreams and fight for survival. Their relationships to each other are complicated and complex at times and each single one of them has to fight their own demons.

During the war they all surprise you, but I especially liked Kainene – ruthless and cynical – Kainene. She proves to be the leader and survivor, using her shrewd mind to assure the survival of her friends and family, channels all her energy into the people of Biafra by supporting refugee camps, hospitals and organizing farming project. I just felt that Kainene provided the moral anchor in this story.
The other bit which intrigued me was that we had a book within the book . This book was called “The World was silent when we Died” . We glimpsed excerpts of the different chapters and for a long time we are left puzzling about the author and then…….. We just know.
Definitely another one of my favorite books this year.

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LibraryThing member wandering_star

When I started this book, it immediately drew me in. Ugwe, a village boy, is being taken to his new employer's home by his aunt. He is sure that she is exaggerating when she tells him that as a servant in this house, he will eat meat every day.

However, as the book went on, it became less and less

satisfying. The characters are - not one-dimensional exactly, but it seems as if each of them could be summed up in one line. This is frustrating, as their relationships develop over the story with the complexity of real life, but their personalities never quite catch up. For example, the relationship between the two sisters, one beautiful but rebelling against the moneyed world of her parents; the other sardonic and savvy, 'the ugly one' who takes over her father's business. This should have been a fascinating dynamic. But all the story gives you, even at the end, is one sister wanting to be liked, the other an aloof mystery.

The other drawback for me was that everything in the story was made explicit - no piece of background or character's motivation was left for the reader to work out for themselves.

Unfortunately, these meant that I never came to care very much about the characters. In fact, if I'd accidentally left this book on the train, I wouldn't have bothered to get another copy so that I could finish it.

I can see why many other readers have enjoyed this book - it takes the reader to a place and time that most of us know very little about; its world is imagined in vivid detail; and some of the writing is beautiful. But for me, it felt like a missed opportunity.

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LibraryThing member sjmccreary

This is the powerfully told story of the Biafran War in Nigeria in the late 1960's. Following its independence from Britian in 1960, the different ethnic groups in Nigeria began experiencing more and more conflict among themselves as Nigeria struggled to establish itself among the nations of Africa

and the world. In 1967, the Igbo people in the southeastern part of the country seceeded and declared themselves to be the independent State of Biafra, triggering a 3-year civil war which ended in Biafra being reabsorbed back into Nigeria. During the war, the Igbo people suffered terribly from famine, starvation and attacks from an overwhelming military force. This war was the source of many of the heart-wrenching photos of starving African children that were published in the US during that time.

The novel tells the story of the conflict from the point of view of 5 Biafran people: Ugwu, a village boy who becomes the houseboy of university professor Odenigbo. Odenigbo's lady friend, Olanna, is from a wealthy family and is London-educated and moves in with him and they eventually marry. Olanna's twin sister, Kainene, is a tough, no-nonense business woman who takes Richard, an English writer, as her lover. These 4 Igbo people flee their homes in the northern part of the country when the Hausa's begin a series of massacres of ethnic Igbo's. Richard, obviously not Igbo, still considers himself to be Biafran and works as hard to support their independence as anyone else.

I thought the book was excellent. Adichie manages to convey the horrors of war, the ravages of famine and starvation, the fear and uncertainity of being forced to flee from one location to another, leaving home and possessions behind, not knowing the fate of loved ones, the frustration of dealing with the bureaucracy of relief efforts, and the humiliation of needing to beg and depend on the generosity of strangers for food in a realistic manner without being too oppressive. She also shows us the optimism of belief in a just cause, the generosity of the destitute sharing what little they have, the corruption of power, and the guilt of deeds done.

I came away with the feeling that life is uncertain, nothing is guaranteed. Bad things can happen to anyone, and love and happiness can be found anywhere. I highly recommend the book.

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LibraryThing member TheAmpersand

A thoughtful, well-written novel about the Nigerian civil war. Many of the issues addressed here will be familiar to readers of post-colonial literature, but Adichie's honesty and insight separate this novel from the pack. She's clear-eyed about what it means to live in a divided society and is

careful to stay away from stereotypes and easy generalizations. Nigeria's culture of corruption and its social inequalities are addressed head-on, and she doesn't apologize for the experiences of her better educated, more Westernized characters. Even the most admirable characters here aren't fuzzy-headed one-worlders – Adichie allows them to display their own ethnic loyalties and lets them get caught up in the excitement and blindness of war. It's these characters' very real imperfections, and Adichie's decision to introduce us to these characters well before the outbreak of hostilities, that will make a reader care about them to the very end.

"Half of a Yellow Sun" is also a novel where you benefit from somebody else's research – I feel like I know much more about the Biafran conflict than I did previously, and I didn't have to plow through any dry history books to learn something about it. It's not a beach read, certainly, but it's recommended.

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LibraryThing member cestovatela

This novel was a bit of a disappointment after all the hype. It starts out strong, introducing us an interesting, well-balanced cast of characters. In the interview included in the epilogue of the book, Adichie says she wanted to write characters who didn't fully understand themselves and she

accomplishes this goal very well. The way that each character acts on impulse and instinct makes them such realistic people. But, although Adichie shines in creating their every day pre-war lives, the book faltered when it reached Nigeria's civil war. The characters' weaknesses and histrionics make them a bit annoying, especially as it seems that they're coming through the war unscathed (though a bit hungry and suffering from substandard housing). The real story to me seemed to be the countless ordinary people starving to death and dying of disease in refugee camps, but they stay on the periphery of the book. I spent the whole time waiting for a Truly Bad Thing to happen to one of the main characters and when it finally did, it lacked the resonance I expected. I do recommend this book because it's a chapter of African history few of us are familiar with, but I don't think it deserves all of its acclaim.

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LibraryThing member blackhornet

A brilliant novel with brilliant characterisations. I also really enjoyed how the narrative switched back and forth between a time before and during the Biafran conflict. I'm not sure in my own mind how this affects the novel's impact as a piece of war fiction. The waste of life is evident, but

does the complacency and idealism of the university characters make them complicit in what happened, or is their early existence something to aspire to, something that would stopped the war if more thought along the same lines. Of course, the author does not let us know, but I found it a little frustrating not to be clear in my own mind. In part I think this was because of a lack of characters drawn in detail from more humble beginnings. Ugwu the houseboy does not count because he aspires in every way to be like his master. Superb novel then, from a superb storyteller; but just a bit more on the historical context, more characters from all sides and this could have added up to an African 'War and Peace'.

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LibraryThing member sainsborough

I am purposely writing this review before reading what anyone else has to say about this book, so that I am not influenced by others' comments and can write a truly personal response.
I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone.
Having said that, I have a few slight reservations:
In my edition, the

A. E. Housman poem begins "Into my heart on air that kills, From yon far country blows" but surely it should be "Into my heart AN air that kills..."? I wouldn't normally comment on the odd typo, but that one is a bit jarring.
Once or twice the pace slowed a bit and I had to apply myself to maintain interest. Also, anything I read about Africa is coloured by my own experience of living there, so I find myself becoming a little impatient with the position that so much can be blamed on "the brutal bequests of colonialism".
Reservations aside, the characters are vividly drawn - I could picture and sympathise with all of them. The last chapters, as the situation worsens, are rivetting. The African landscape is also vividly drawn - one feels the heat, dust, humidity, parchedness, lushness or whatever.
I found myself wondering, as the end of the book approached, whether the characters I had got to know so well would survive, given what was going on around them. The way the book ended, in this respect, was entirely satisfying and very moving. I was left with a dull ache of loss. I also admire the way the mysterious snippets of a book, that appear from time to time, are resolved at the end.
Savour and pass on...

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LibraryThing member Citizenjoyce

The essence of Half a Yellow Sun is shown in one sentence. Two sisters are touring a refugee camp in Biafra where people are dead and dying of malnutrition: She slapped a fly away from her face and thought how healthy all the flies looked, how alive, how vibrant. Chimamanda Adichie uses pictures

like this to show how war nurtures the most vile parts of the human psyche like a body dying of metastatic cancer, the body dies, the cancer is vibrant and healthy. She follows members of an upper class Nigerian family from before, through and in the aftermath of the Nigeria-Biafra civil war. With just a few main characters she shows a variety of experiences of education, art, love, denial, fear, acceptance, corruption, substance abuse, starvation, rape and the usual accompaniments to life and war. Highly recommended to anyone who thinks any good can come from war.

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LibraryThing member kambrogi

This tale of life in Nigeria during the Biafran war is both historically accurate and personally insightful. Adichie’s most brilliant move was to balance the tale told through the educated eyes of an upper-class Nigerian woman with the perspective of a bright but undereducated village boy as well

as that of a white male British journalist. The people are complex, multi-faceted and diverse, and their communities overlap with each other and many additional communities in Nigeria and England. Ultimately, this picture of the Biafran War, what came before and what came after, is as complicated as it still is in retrospect today. Having interacted with several of those communities myself, I found every last detail as real, and as heartbreaking, as the history deserves.

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LibraryThing member mrstreme

Admittedly, it was with trepidation that I selected Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for my personal challenge to read Orange prizewinners. So many of my reading friends raved about this book. When a book is so highly regarded, I worried that it would be too high up on the reading

pedestal – and in the end, it would disappoint. Furthermore, when I finally got this book, I scowled (just slightly) at its length – 541 pages. Chunksters (what I consider books over 350 pages) rarely hold my interest. Indeed, I was worried.

However, once enveloped in this book, my worries quickly ceased. Half of a Yellow Sun was a book worthy of its praise and its long length. Quite simply, it was an astonishing, gut-wrenching read.

Briefly, it’s the story of the effect of Biafra’s (in southeastern Nigeria) quest for independence in the late 1960’s. It’s also the story of family – both biological and assumed – and how those ties know no bounds. Colorful and unforgettable characters filled each page: Ugwu, the houseboy; Odenigbo, the revolutionary-minded professor; Olanna, Odenigbo’s beautiful lover and her twin sister, Kainene; and Richard, who is in love with Kainene. The reader was swept into Nigerian cultures and lifestyles. Without a doubt, it was an illuminating read.

Adichie did not sugarcoat how war affects civilians. People died, family members went missing, homes destroyed, women raped and children became ill. This book is not for the weak of heart. As a reader, I was torn by my need to take a break from the content and my desire to continue reading because I was so caught up in the story.

I highly recommend Half of a Yellow Sun to anyone interested in reading a profound novel about war, family and the effects of nationalism.

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LibraryThing member HearTheWindSing

I read only about one-third of this novel. Adichie's (CNA) writing doesn't agree with me at all. And the characters are so flat they should be able to slide under a door trouble-free. The characters don't even bother to play their role with its limited definition. Instead they keep pounding their

fists on a table and shouting out what their role is supposed to be: "I am a sardonic bitch.", "I am sooo non-racist you won't even believe it", "blah blah".

Ouch! My head hurts.

One type of characters I am almost certain to hate are the P.E.R.F.E.C.T. ones. And CNA stops just short of establishing Olanna's idol in a temple and worshiping her. We are constantly reminded of what a smart and benevolent person she is. And non-racist. She is always showing off her fancy London-based education, always talking about this charity or that. To make sure she is universally adored, CNA mentions her angel-like beauty almost every time Olanna is mentioned.

In CNA's world all rich people are by default super-shallow. Now poor Olanna had the misfortune of being born to rich parents. How do we fix that? Olanna leaves her parent's house to live with her boyfriend (does this count as a sacrifice?) and takes up a job. Her parents still keep trying to shove fancy cars and bundles of cash down her throat. She feebly resists, but has to accept them anyway. Very convenient!

Odenigbo - the revolutionary. His activism largely involves drinking with buddies in his living room and abruptly shouting out some out-of-context political dialogue. To hold up this forward and enlightened image of his he needs to keep breaking into such diatribes without any sense of place or time - so I am driving my houseboy to see his sick mom. I know exactly what the boy needs right now, my political rant. Yup.

Ugwu - So wait, you mean my mom is not dying, she is only terribly sick? Hurray, I can go back to fantasizing about Nnesinachi breasts.

Richard - super-lame white boy who has read a Wikipedia article (or some equivalent) about one Nigerian art form and now that's the only thing he will ever talk about. And hey, he claims to have interest in a local art form. What do you mean that's not sufficient to give him a non-racist badge?

...and a couple of more such posers. In terms of writing, CNA tries to be somewhat fancy and writer-ly, thus ending up writing in a style that doesn't come naturally to her. You can see her trying a bit too hard. One rule of thumb she seems to follow is to attach an unrelated, trivial sentence at the end of a paragraph. Is that supposed to impart depth to the writing?

I know I haven't reached the meat of the novel yet. There is a war on the horizon. Typically one can expect to see a transformation in someone who has lived through a war. Given what I have seen so far, these characters may jump from one assigned characteristic to another, if the author tells them to. I don't expect to see any realistic, believable transitions. I am just going to live without knowing who all make it through the war.

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LibraryThing member LheaJLove

There are two important rules of novel writing. The first is that the greatness and subtlty of a novel hendges upon how information is withheld and not how it is revealed. Second, that each story has one perfect form. If a writer fails to find that perfect form, the story will not tell.

Chimamanda

Ngozi Adichie and defied time and mastered form in her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun. A historical account of the Biafran nation embedded with personal tales of love, betrayal and pride, Adichie's novel is masterfully composed.

Each sentence sings, while each charecter has his/her own rhythm. Each characters identity is deeply developed and identifiable. If Adichie never noted which character was speaking, the reader would know because each person has his/her own cadence and style that dances and matures through out the text.

There is the essence of love which survives in spite of war. This love freely, and sensuously carries us through the text. Each scene is whole, and satisfyingly complete. Nothing is lost. Every opened chapter meets it's close.

Adichie's main characters in both Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus tend to be well educated, well financed. Instinctually, one would wonder how representative the novels are of the nation as a whole. As a reviewer, I must retract that instinct. Why must all writers of color write 'representative' works? Adichie has spoke of feeling personally compelled to ward of negative stereo-types and expectations. While both novels stand tall in accomplishing just that, each work stands more importantly as a beautifully complete, testiment of literature in its highest art.

Some novels must be read immediately twice in a row in order to create the illusion that the story, the song never ends. The reader will not want to close Half of a Yellow Sun, and very well turn to these pages time and time again.

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LibraryThing member LisaMaria_C

This is "based on the Nigerian-Biafran War of 1967 to 1970"--and on the stories of the author's parents among others. The title comes from one of the symbols of the Biafran flag, a half of a yellow sun that "stood for the glorious future." Biafra split off from Nigeria because of the persecution of

the Igbo people of the region. It may be one reason I connected with the novel--I wasn't disoriented because someone I had been close to when I was young was an Igbo (she spelled it "Ibo") and I heard from her about the short-lived Biafran nation and her tart take on the other Nigerian tribes--Yoruba, Fulani, Hausa... Tribal diversions exacerbated by religious divisions--Igbos being largely Christian, Yorubas and Hausas Muslim. My friend told me, rather proudly, that the Igbos were known as the "Jews of Nigeria"--entrepreneurial, ambitious, highly valuing education, and considered "uppity" by their fellow Nigerians--and persecuted by them. So I had to smile when I read this tidbit: "Socialism would never work for the Igbo... Oybenjealu is a common name for girls and you know what it means? 'Not to Be Married by a Poor Man.' To stamp that on a child at birth is capitalism at its best."

So yes, this was interesting as a portrait of a culture, of the political currents of the late sixties, of war. But that doesn't get a book five stars with me. It got that because above all it gave me characters I cared about and even minor figures were written with complexity, nuance and insight. The story is primarily told through three characters: Ugwu, a houseboy from a rural village who works for a professor, Odenigbo, with revolutionary principles; Olanna, Odenigbo's lover, and Richard, an English expatriot who loves Olanna's twin sister Kainene. I liked Ugwu, Olanna and Richard--although my liking dipped and rose throughout the story, and at times I felt frustrated with each of them--but the way you would be with a friend you want to shake some sense to--they never lost my overall sympathy. For the first hundred pages Adichie absorbs you into their world and hopes in peace time and lets you get to know them. After that? Well, after that is the Biafran War and it's all the more harrowing for allowing us into their lives before those terrible times. Parts of this novel were heart-breaking and hard to take--very dark. So be prepared and don't expect a light, fluffy read. But a rich one? Yes.

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LibraryThing member littlebookworm

I must have missed something in this book, based on the universal praise it has received. It took me a long while to get into it. I appreciated Adichie's prose, her detailed characters, and her attention to history, but something along the way failed to grab me. The worst part is that I can't quite

nail down what dissatisfied me, because usually I can. I think that the conflict disturbed me, as did the fact that such atrocities were happening and no one did anything substantial to help the Biafrans. It was hopeless and depressing. That doesn't negate the power of the story, but it does make me step back from the novel and question. I suppose that is actually the mark of a great book, but at the same time I just can't say that I liked it.

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LibraryThing member bibliobibuli

Adichie gives the Biafran war a very human face by taking her time to create a cast of characters we really care about - especially the twin sisters Olanna and Kainene, and the houseboy Ugwu who comes to lives with Odenigbo, (an intellectual of revolutionary persuasion) and Olanna's love interest.

(The group felt that Adichie had probably struggled much harder with the wimpy British journalist, Richard, Kainene's lover, who decides to throw his lot in with the Igbo people .) There are a number of very well realised minor characters including the twins' wealthy parents, and Richard's comic houseboy Harrison, who delights in concocting British dishes.

The main events are seen from the vantage point of these Olanna, Richard and Ugwu in turn.

I was a bit thrown initially by what I felt were strong similarities (probably imagined?) to Romesh Gunasekera's Reef, but was quickly drawn into the book by all the human drama - love, infidelity, sisterly rivalry, family tensions, black magic. Then, when the war came, for me the physical book in my hands melted and became an open door. I wasn't watching Biafra in black and white news broadcasts - I was there. Yes, there were of course harrowing scenes, but it is the story of day to day survival in the face of starvation that Adichie portrays so well.

This is an episode in Nigeria's past that very much needed to be written about and Adichie makes that history highly accessible.

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LibraryThing member FionaCat

Set in 1960s Nigeria, this historical novel tells the stories of three people caught up in the civil war between Biafra and the rest of Nigeria. Ugwu is a young boy who gets a job as house boy to a professor at the university. Olanna is the professor's lover, and Richard is an English writer in

love with Olanna's twin sister Kainene.

This is as much the story of their entangled lives as it is a chronicle of the Biafran bid for independence. Sadly, many of the details of this conflict sound all too familiar; things have not changed much in many parts of Africa. Genocide, conscription, rape, corruption and starvation are all issues we are still dealing with today. By introducing us to characters we come to care for in the early part of the book, Adichie makes the horrors of the war strike home in a way that a nonfiction portrayal could never do.

I found this book less compelling than Adichie's previous novel, Purple Hibiscus, likely because I found the political aspect less interesting than the relationships among the characters. That is all that keeps me from giving it a 5 star rating.

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LibraryThing member Cariola

With all the glowing reports on this "must read" book, I certainly expected more. Frankly, I had to drag myself through it and kept getting sidetracked by more interesting books. It seems to take forever for anything much to happen; the book could have been just as powerful at 100-150 pages less.

The main characters are crafted well and the book presents a strong portrait of the Biafran wars and their effects. But overall, I was rather disappointed.

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LibraryThing member dawnlovesbooks

a heartbreaking tale through the wrenching events of a country at war and the effects it has on the people involved. i was intrigued by this book from the first to last page. the characters and african culture and landscape were so vivid they practically came to life. what a wonderful and amazing

book!

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LibraryThing member The_Hibernator

Half of a Yellow Sun takes place in Nigeria during the Nigeria/Biafa civil war. The narrative follows 3 characters: Ugwu, a village boy who is taken in by some politically-inclined academics as a house boy; Olanna, Ugwu's mistress and a rich heiress; and Richard, a British expat who desperately

wants to be accepted by the Biafrans as one of them. The stories of these three characters are superbly and tragically woven together on a backdrop of war, racial hatred, and famine. This is one of the most impressive books I've read in quite a while. The characters were so deep that I felt I knew them. The events described had an eerie realism to them that comes from the author's intimate knowledge of the history and people. This is one of those books that makes you feel like every incident described is important and well-planned. This is a story not only of war, but of people--their dreams, their loves, their fears, their strengths and weaknesses. Half of a Yellow Sun is a must-read for anyone interested in international literature.

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LibraryThing member Lisa2013

I really liked this book, but even though the writing is superb and the author crafts a good story, I did not love it. The main reason is that I usually enjoy historical fiction books, but in this instance, I remember this era and the news coming out of Biafra/Nigeria, especially the news of the

starving children with the huge bellies. (A close friend of mine endlessly collected money for this cause, to which I generously donated. Turns out the food the money was to provide probably never did get to those who truly needed it.) While I didn’t know many of the details of this conflict, I was a young teen at the time and was familiar with the news of the war and the subsequent suffering. And, as I was reading this book what drove me crazy was I longed to know what was truth and what was fiction. I think I would have enjoyed a non-fiction book more, or this as a novel that was complete fiction. The other aspects of the book I didn’t much enjoy were that at times it read like a soap opera, albeit a good one; also, the way the story is told I didn’t feel as emotionally involved with the characters as much as I would have expected. (One character did get to me throughout.)

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