Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Half of a yellow sun is a remarkable book in many ways. It won the Orange Broadband prize for fiction in 2007 and it was one of the biggest selling novels of that year. It is set in Nigeria during the 1960's against the backdrop of civil war and the Biafran strive for independence. It is remarkable especially because its author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was not even born until 1977 yet it is written with such passion it is as if she was there, recounting her own, often harrowing story. This is her second novel, following Purple Hibiscus, which also received much critical acclaim. The book uses a handful of key characters, each from completely different ...  Read the complete review

Nigeria was torn apart by civil war in the 1960s. This book tells the story of three people who are connected by fate: Ugwu, a houseboy, who is fiercely loyal to his patriotic university lecturer bos; Olanna, a rich man's daughter in love with Ugwu's boss; and Richard, a British writer who falls in love with the country and the Igbo tribe's cause, and decides to put his roots down there. When the story begins, in the early sixties, all are fairly content with life, but are unaware of the horrors that will face them in the Nigerian-Biafran war of 1967-1970. During the war, all are stretched to the limit and it is uncertain whether any of them will survive either the ...  Read the complete review

I don't often write book reviews but I really enjoyed (if that is the right turn of phrase) this book and thought I would share my thoughts. Half of a Yellow Sun is set in Nigeria during the 1960s and the title comes from the national emblem for Biafra. Whilst I, like many others of my generation, remember the harrowing television images of starving children during the Biafrian crisis, I have to confess my understanding of the background to that crisis was quite derisory. Although this book is fiction it is set during the now well documented political revolution and, judging by the dedication at the front of the book, it is a period time during which some of the ...  Read the complete review

It is not often that a novel comes to hand that has been prized, praised and pre-inflated. Half of a Yellow Sun was in that category when I opened it and began to read. And I was captivated immediately. I read the first hundred pages at a pace, delighting in the ease with which the Chimanada Ngozi Adichie used language to draw me into the middle-class clique centred on the University of Nkussa which provides the core characters of her book. Their infidelities, their inconsistencies, their desire, despite the servants, for equality and freedom are symptomatic of their time. The dissimilar twin sisters, Olanna and Kainene, one imagines will provide a vehicle for parallel ...  Read the complete review

This book written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the best books that I have read in the past couple of years. It has everything you want in a story, good characters who you can relate to and feel for, a great storyline which is also often based on truth and excellent narrative which focuses on each particular character separately throughout the chapters. The story is set during the Nigeria-Biafra War in the late 1960's, which I have to admit I knew nothing about until reading this book (I had never even heard of Biafra). It mainly follows a house boy called Ugwu, his master Odenigbo, Odenigbo's partner Olanna and Olanna's sister Kainene. All ...  Read the complete review