Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a book which creates beautifully realised characters that are complex and magnetic. The story is told through the lives of three disparate people: Olanna: daughter of nouveau riche Nigerians, Ugwu; a village boy, and Richard; an English writer. The succession of Biafra from Nigeria in 1967 is the central event, around which this book revolves; detailing the impact of the war on domestic lives in an unsentimental yet heartbreaking way.

The book introduces the characters in a period of peace before the war; that is a bit slow-moving. However, it is a necessary step in the construction of character, that later gives the book its impact when we live events from their perspectives.

A fabulous book: lyrical and moving, as well as epic and hard-hitting. A must-read!

Half of a Yellow Sun

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Knopf, Sep 2006, $24.95

ISBN: 1400044162

In the late 1960's civil war devastates the Igbo people who formed the independent nation of Biafra having broken away from Nigeria. Thirteen year old peasant Ugwu has survived so far, even being forcefully conscripted into the shabby Biafran army; currently he works as a houseboy for Professor Odenigbo.

At the same time the lad endures life and death, a savage slaughter of the affluent leaves twin sisters Olanna and Kainene without any other family member left alive. Both choose similar paths to safety; the only ones available to young orphaned females. Olanna becomes mistress to Professor Odenigbo, who loathes the Europeans for what their occupation has wrought to his homeland; Kainene, on the other hand, selects British writer Richard, who is writing a book on the civil war impact on the Igbo, as her protector. Ugwu and Kainene form a relationship, but she becomes outraged when he spends a drunken night with her twin, putting all three at risk.

Readers will feel and "see" the impact of war on the innocent in this superior historical novel. Using the Biafra civil war of the 1960's as the influence that directly impacts her three prime characters, and to a lesser degree the two support players, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie paints a vivid condemnation of war, in which peasants below the frey easily become collateral damage and survivability is everything. Readers (except VP Cheney, who would find a connection to 9/11) will appreciate this powerful look at real world surviving.