A harrowing account of Nigerian civil war (Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)

Member Name: micksheff

Product:	Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Date:	29/03/08 (134 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good story, good characters

Disadvantages: Quite harrowing and not for the faint hearted

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 backgrounds, to tell the story, each of whom are brought together by fate. This is the story about how they each cope as things begin to spiral dangerously out of control.

At the centre of the story is a young houseboy called Egwu. He is from a poor village and comes to the university town of Nsukka to work for one of the university professors, Odenigbo, who Egwu generally addresses as "Sah".

Almost illiterate and in an alien environment Egwu quickly becomes fascinated about everything around him. The highly descriptive style of writing describes his first encounter with a refrigerator, packed full of packaged food, wonderfully, giving us just one such example of the young boys' naivety about life outside his village. His master sends him to the local school, where the professor's children attend and Egwu quickly develops a thirst for knowledge.

Odenigbo, a maths lecturer at the university is an armchair socialist. Most evenings he entertains a group of distinguished friends in his house and they talk about politics and drink brandy. Egwu can often be found eavesdropping at the door but since their conversations are held entirely in English he struggles to understand them at first. Assisted by his master's books and his education however, he quickly picks up English and longs to speak it perfectly like his master and his master's friends.

Olanna is the daughter of a high chief. She is Odenigbo's mistress and eventually moves into his house, much to the dismay of Egwu, who is very loyal to his master and does not want to have to share him with anyone. Olanna is beautiful, in fact she is stunning by most accounts. Olanna quickly warms to their houseboy and vice versa. She has been educated in England and speaks the most perfect English that Egwu has ever heard, and Egwu, a pubescent child of about 13, places her on a pedestal as an object of his desires and fantasies.

The other key character in the story is an Englishman called Richard, who has made Nigeria his home. He yearns to be a writer and has developed an obsession with the Igbo people and their culture. He is the lover of Kainene, who just happens to be Olanna's twin sister and when his job takes him to Nsukka he soon finds himself frequently attending Odenigbo's evening discussions.

These early pages of the story introduce each of the characters to us in a vivid way that brings them alive, such is the attention to detail and descriptive style of writing I found myself deeply engrossed within the characters long before the story had actually begun. These early pages, the first 80 or so pages of the book, paint quite an idyllic picture of life in Nsukka with Odenigbo and his circle of friends, Olanna, Egwu and Richard. Rumblings of past conflicts are hinted at, for example we learn that Olanna and her sister, Kainene are estranged and seldom speak, but we do not learn why, but other than that life seems pretty good for middle class Nigerians in Nsukka.

The story really gets going when civil war breaks out in the north which eventually leads to the Igbo uprising and their strive towards independence. The dream of their new country that they name after the Bay of Biafra and their new country's flag - half of a luminous yellow sun on a vivid green and black background from where the title of the book takes it name.

At first the conflicts in the north seem far removed from the idyllic life in Nsukka and serve only to fuel the conversations at Odenigbo's dinner parties but as the troubles deepen the Nigerian troops, reluctant to hand over Biafra to its people because of its potential oil reserves fight back. Soon the dominant Yoruba speaking Muslim Hausa people of the south indulge themselves upon the ethnic cleansing of the Igbo.

As the Hausa troops march into Nsukka, burning the houses of the Igbo and raping the wives and children, Odenigbo, Olanna and Egwu are forced to flee, turning their lives upside down.

I found this to be a fascinating story that kept me gripped right from the start. I actually have an Nigerian - Igbo friend whose family suffered in this conflict. My friend's father was quite high up in the Igbo military and by African standards they were very wealthy. During the Biafran war of 1967-70 his sister was murdered and his father captured and tortured and also eventually murdered too. My friend, only about 7 years old at the time fled to Britain with his mother and other relatives and claimed political asylum here. My friend seldom talks about this period of his life but I have seen the scar on his back from shoulder to shoulder. As I read this fictional account of the conflict I knew that my friend was one of the lucky ones.

This is not a book for the faint hearted but it is written in such a way that it is not grotesquely vulgar either, the worst of the atrocities merely being hinted at. With massacres of the Igbo everywhere Odenigbo, Olanna, their newly adopted baby and Egwu, each battle to survive. Things take a twist when Egwu is conscripted to the Biafran army and it is then a case of just keep reading to the end to see which of them, if any survive.

Throughout the book, at the end of some of the chapters there are a few paragraphs from another book entitled "The Book: The world was silent when we died". These writings give an insight into the Biafran conflict from a different perspective and at first I thought these were taken from an actual book. As you read on you realise this is also a fictional account but the significance of this second story does not become apparent until the very last page of the book.

At the very end of the book there are some notes from the author. She tells us that the character of Egwu was based loosely on the houseboy that her family had when she was growing up in Nsukka. Other characters are also influenced by people that she had met or knew. She also tells us that her own family, including her grandparents were massacred during the conflict.

Half of a yellow sun is a fictitious account of the Biafran conflict that is based around factual events. Reading the story I thought that maybe some of the names of the Government officials and the military leaders were real, but reading the author's notes at the end I discovered that even these were a figment of her vivid imagination.

This is a remarkable book that tells a very harrowing story, but I am glad that I took the time to read it.

Summary: A ficticious story set around the Nigerian-Biafra war of 1967-70