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The Complex Business of Living While War Rages in Nigeria

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By Janet Maslin

• Sept. 21, 2006

At the start of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s instantly enthralling second novel, a 13-year-old bumpkin named Ugwu becomes the houseboy of Odenigbo, an urbane mathematics professor. The time is the early 1960’s, the setting southeastern Nigeria. Odenigbo insists on being called Master and patronizingly tries to instruct his new servant in matters of etiquette and academics. But the boy needs no help educating himself. He very quickly notices that Master’s clean, dainty toes belong to feet that always wear shoes.

Ugwu is eager and ambitious. He makes a point of speaking English instead of his native Igbo. He does not know the meaning of words like sophist, but he resents hearing Master’s intellectual friends toss them about. At the same time he becomes fiercely protective of his new boss and extremely interested in Olanna, Odenigbo’s privileged girlfriend.

Olanna is very beautiful, unlike her acerbic twin sister, Kainene. “The benefit of being the ugly daughter is that nobody uses you as sex bait,” Kainene remarks. Both women are well aware of their family’s wealth and power, and both presume this is armor against adversity. Both attract the interest of a white Englishman named Richard, a sometime journalist trying to write a book about Nigeria, who is involved with Susan, a brittle white Englishwoman, as the book begins. For Susan, Richard’s writing amounts to “the best of her hobbies.” When Richard begins falling for Kainene, he is astonished that the fiercely jealous Susan doesn’t notice. Racism keeps her from recognizing Kainene as competition.

It doesn’t take long for Ms. Adichie to weave these characters into a finely wrought, inescapable web. In a major leap forward from her impressive debut novel, “Purple Hibiscus” (Algonquin Books, 2003), she expands expertly and inexorably on these early scenes. And the many-faceted “Half of a Yellow Sun” soon develops a panoramic span. Taking its title from an emblem on the flag of Biafra, the book sustains an intimate focus and an epic backdrop as Biafra secedes from Nigeria and genocidal hell breaks loose.

“Half of a Yellow Sun” is not a conventional war story any more than is “A Farewell to Arms” or “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” (Though the Nigerian-born Ms. Adichie, who divides her time between Nigeria and the United States, has been compared mostly to African writers, she warrants many different comparisons.) It is a story whose characters live in a changing wartime atmosphere, doing their best to keep that atmosphere at bay. And while the ravages of the Biafran war are well known, they do not manifest themselves in predictable or one-note ways here. For Ms. Adichie, famine in Biafra is not only a source of horror. It is also, the book wryly mentions, something that made parents all over the world tell their children to eat.

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Half of a Yellow Sun

By chimamanda ngozi adichie.

There are no winners or losers in a war, only the cries of people torn apart by the gun and the smoke that rises from the fires of battle. 'Half of a Yellow Sun' is a historical fiction story set during the Nigerian civil war.

About the Book

Article written by Joshua Ehiosun

C2 certified writer.

‘Half of a Yellow Sun’  is a 2006 novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie that tells the story of the Biafran War from the perspective of four people from different backgrounds. The novel features a British expatriate, a university professor, a house servant, and the daughter of a wealthy Igbo chief who struggles through the war and fights to survive.

Key Facts About  Half of a Yellow Sun

• Nigerian civil war, a novel that made people understand the war from those at the center of the conflict.
• Publication Date : 2006.
• Literary Period : Contemporary.
• Point of View : Third-person point of view.
• Number of Pages : 448.
• Genre : Historical fiction.
• Setting : Nigeria, Nnsuka, Kano, Umuahia.
• Climax : The novel’s climax occurs when Ugwu tries to connect a cable and plug, then a bomb hit his location, killing Captain Ohaeto and injuring him.
• Protagonists : Odenigbo, Ugwu, Olanna, Richard.

Chimamanda Adichie and  Half of A Yellow Sun

‘Half of a Yellow Sun’  is Chimamanda’s second novel. Being an Igbo woman and a pro-supporter of the Biafran movement, Chimamanda showed how life was in Nigeria before, during, and after the civil war of 1967. With most of her books centered around the civil war, Chimamanda drew upon the stories of people who experienced the war first-hand. ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ was a massive success , and the book won numerous awards due to its realistic depiction of life during the war.

Books Related to  Half of a Yellow Sun

Books related to ‘ Half of a Yellow Sun ‘ tell stories of how war and strife shape people’s lives. Here is a list of books related to ‘ Half of a Yellow Sun .’

• ‘ Homegoing ‘ by Yaa Gyasi is a book that tells the story of two sisters Effia and Esi, born in two different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. While Effia is married to an English man and lives a comfortable lifestyle, Esi is sold as a slave and moves to America. The story progresses through time and shows what became of Esi’s descendants.
• ‘ Girl, Woman, Other ‘  by Bernadine Evaristo tells the story of 12 different characters who narrate the story of their lives, families, friendships, and lovers throughout the years.
• ‘ Things Fall Apart ‘  by Chinua Achebe is a book that tells the story of a man named Okonkwo, the wrestling champion in the fictional town of Umuofia. The novel tells the story of life before and during the colonialism of Nigeria.
• ‘ The Vanishing Half ‘  by Brit Bennett tells the story of two sisters who run away from their home, a small community, to lead different lives. Though their paths are separated, the sister’s fates are intertwined as their daughters’ life inevitably get entangled together.
• ‘ Pinchiko ‘  by Min Jin Lee tells the story of a teenage girl Sunja, whose father was a fisherman. After falling for a wealthy stranger, Sunja finds out she is pregnant. However, she discovers that her lover is already married and refuses to marry him. Instead, she marries a sickly minister on his way to Japan. Her decision eventually sets the stage for a saga that lasts for generations.

The Lasting Impact of  Half of a Yellow Sun

‘ Half of a Yellow Sun ‘ is a book with undisputable relevance even in today’s world. Ranked by the Guardian in 2019 as one of the top ten best books since 2000, the novel showed how war tore lives apart and how that same war created a rift in the very fabric of a young country. ‘ Half of a Yellow Sun ‘ made people experience a feeling of Nigeria before and after the Biafran war, and the story showed how relationships were made and destroyed.

Half of a Yellow Sun Glossary 📖

‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ uses words from the Igbo dialect. Though many unique words used in the novel are Igbo, some are pidgin, a simplified form of English that uses literal elements of Nigerian languages.

Half of a Yellow Sun Review ⭐

Half of a yellow sun historical context 🪖, half of a yellow sun quotes 💬, half of a yellow sun characters 📖, half of a yellow sun themes and analysis 🪖, half of a yellow sun plot summary 🪖.

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The Best Fiction Books » Contemporary Fiction

Half of a yellow sun, by chimamanda ngozi adichie.

***Winner of the 2007 Women’s Prize for Fiction***

The most celebrated of a new generation of Nigerian novelists bravely and brilliantly tackles an event that still seems to whisper in the heart of the country’s affairs perhaps more than any other: the devastating civil war of 1967-70.

Recommendations from our site

“ Half of a Yellow Sun centres around a family as they transition from a position of influence and privilege to being just regular citizens of the newly formed Republic of Biafra. I don’t know how much I need to tell you, but, basically, about six years after Nigerian independence there was a civil war known as the Biafran War. It’s a beautifully written, big swing of a novel with lots of themes: moral responsibility, ethnic allegiances, class, race. And it’s all set against the backdrop of this pivotal time in Nigerian history.” Read more...

Novels Set in Nigeria

Chioma Okereke , Novelist

“This novel came out to a real fanfare of people acclaiming it as a superb piece of fiction. I’d heard a lot of people talk about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and what a brilliant writer she is. I thought, ‘I’ve got to give this a go.’ Oh my goodness! It’s another really big, immersive novel by somebody who really knows their stuff. And because it’s such recent history—late 60s and 1970—she has been able to draw on primary sources. That’s a rare thing when you’re writing historical fiction, that it’s still within living memory. So you know it’s right, that the details are correct. It’s like reading news reports, but in this incredible narrative, in which you’re really bound up with the characters.” Read more...

Historical Fiction Set Around the World

Jane Johnson , Historical Novelist

“It’s a novel about life in the late 1960s, before, during and after the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War because of the attempt by the region of that name to secede. And it really highlights a fundamental problem of modern state-building in Nigeria and in many African countries and that is the challenge of forging unity amidst diversity within the often very arbitrary boundaries created by Europeans.” Read more...

The best books on African Politics

Evan Lieberman , Political Scientist

“This is a story about a family during the Biafran war, focusing on twin sisters. They get caught up in the war, and they get separated. It’s about the political landscape at the time, and how it affected this family. I was very impressed by the breadth of the story and the work that went into writing it, the historical research that Chimamanda did, and how she managed to make fact into fiction. That, for me, craft wise, was such a big achievement. It stayed factual, even though it was fiction. That’s why I chose it and that’s why I liked it. I was very impressed by it as a work of literature.” Read more...

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Blessing Musariri , Novelist

“Her story is told by three powerful, self-aware and intellectually upright characters who are swept up in the struggle to establish an independent Nigeria. It’s a call to arms.” Read more...

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Michelle Jana Chan , Novelist

“Chimamanda Adichie broke the ice in writing about the Biafran war….She evokes well this notion of a nation that flared and died and the passion that went into that and why this was something which had this very deep appeal for a part of the nation which, depending on your point of view, was either marginalised or saw itself as special. Unless you travel in the east, you don’t realise how resonant that still is today. Biafra will be mentioned by the guy in the roadside Coke stall and the chap you chat to outside the church.” Read more...

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Other books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americanah by chimamanda ngozi adichie, the thing around your neck by chimamanda ngozi adichie, our most recommended books, underworld by don delillo, blood meridian by cormac mccarthy, the shining by stephen king, the road by cormac mccarthy, riddley walker by russell hoban, the things they carried by tim o’ brien.

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Half of a Yellow Sun

A masterly, haunting novel from a writer heralded by  The Washington Post Book World  as “the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,”  Half of a Yellow Sun recreates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria and the chilling violence that followed. Published in 2006, Half of A Yellow Sun garnered numerous accolades and was awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2007.

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 they 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 about the ways in which love can complicate them all.

Half of a Yellow Sun  is licensed for publication in 37 languages.

Awards | Distinction

Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (fiction category), 2007

PEN ‘Beyond Margins’ Award (now called PEN Open Book Awards), 2007

Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (now called Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction), 2007

Winner of the ‘Best of the Best’ of the second decade of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, 2015

Praises for Half of a Yellow Sun

"I was swept along...rarely have I felt so there, in the middle of all that suffering. I wasted the last fifty pages, reading them far too greedily and fast because I couldn't bear to let go. There are not many novels where war is seen mainly from the women's point of view, rather than that of the soldier, which makes this one double valuable...a magnificent second novel [which] can't fail to find the readership it deserves and demands."

- Margaret Forster

"Vividly written, thrumming with life, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel. In its compassionate intelligence, as in its capacity for intimate portraiture, this novel is a worthy successor to such twentieth-century classics as Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River."

- Joyce Carol Oates

"An immense achievement...Half of a Yellow Sun has a ramshackle freedom and exuberant ambition...No matter how dire the circumstances, censure is not Adichie’s thing. She leaves the judging to us...As well as freshly recreating this nightmarish chapter in her country's history, she writes about the slow process by which love, if strong enough, may overcome."

- The Observer

"A landmark novel, whose clear, undemonstrative prose can so precisely delineate nuance...Literary reflections on the Biafra war have a long and distinguished history...Adichie is part of a new generation revisiting the history that her parents survived. She brings to it a lucid intelligence and compassion, and a heartfelt plea for memory."

- The Guardian

"We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie knows what is at stake, and what to do about it. She is fearless, or she would not have taken on the intimidating horror of Nigeria's civil war. Adichie came almost fully made."

- Chinua Achebe

"At once historical and eerily current, Half of a Yellow Sun takes place in the forests of southeastern Nigeria 40 years ago, and honors the memory of a war largely forgotten. Adichie’s prose thrums with life. Like Nadine Gordimer, Adichie positions her characters at crossroads where public and private allegiances threaten to collide. Half of a Yellow Sun [has] an empathetic tone that never succumbs to simplifying impulses, heroic or demonic...Reaching deep, [it] speaks through history to our war-racked age not through abstract analogy but through the energy of vibrant detail, [and] a mastery of small things."

- The New York Times Book Review

• Book Reviews

Review of Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun offers a heart-wrenching account of the Biafran War (1967-1970), beautifully wrapped in a story of love, loyalty, betrayal, resilience, and hope. She places a human face on a war that has been far removed from historical memory outside of Nigeria. As a result of the massacre of the Igbo people in the predominantly Muslim Hausa North, Igbos of the South sought to establish their own state: Biafra. In response, the Nigerian government declared war against Biafra, unwilling to allow the oil-rich south-east to secede. The war was catalyzed by the remnants of British colonialism, which created fragmented national boundaries and provoked ethnic tension between the two groups. Although the book is a work of historical fiction, it is based on very real accounts and exhaustive research of the Biafran War and continuing conflict.

Moreover, separatist sentiment lives on through the Indigenous People of Biafra, a movement led by Nnamdi Kanu, who was arrested by Nigeria’s Department of State Services in October 2015 on “treasonable felony” charges. [1] His arrest has sparked pro-Biafran protests and violence between security forces and civilians, while Kanu remains in detention. In light of this, Adichie’s book is all the more relevant today, as the wounds of the war are still fresh for many Nigerians and the fight for Biafra’s independence continues.

Through Adichie’s prose, we are offered a glimpse into the lives of several very different and multifaceted characters who are all determined to survive in the Free State of Biafra. One of the main characters, Odenigbo, is a math professor at a university in Nsukka, a revolutionary thinker and an ardent Biafran who struggles with the psychological impact of war violence. Olanna is Odenigbo’s wife; she is of the Nigerian elite and attempting to cope with being thrust from her comfort zone while striving to keep her family intact throughout the war. Richard is a shy English expatriate who falls in love with Olanna’s fraternal twin, Kainene. Throughout the novel, he seeks to identify as Biafran, in order to break away from a colonizer identity. However, he soon realizes that his love for Kainene and his passion for Igbo art neither absolve him from his colonialist past nor make him Biafran. Ugwu is Odenigbo’s house servant, who transforms from a wide-eyed, village-bred boy to an intelligent young man who is forced to grapple with the “casual cruelty” that surrounds him while struggling to maintain his moral conscience. We watch as the once normal and relatively privileged lives of these characters are shaken and overturned by war.

The author manages to intricately weave divergent perspectives and aspects of the war into her story. She forces the reader to confront horrific scenes of rape, indiscriminate killings, constant air raids, famine, displacement, children’s bellies inflated by malnutrition, and the image of a little girl’s decapitated head with discolored skin and rolled-back eyes. Yet simultaneously, she juxtaposes these harrowing scenes with moments of forgiveness, generosity, sacrifice, and love. Adichie presents a story that is thorough and complex—spanning the politics of race, gender, colonialism, culture, corruption, nationhood, and the fragility of human relationships—while also highlighting the international, historical context of the setting, as seen through references to the civil rights movements of the 1960s and the Cold War.

The novel is a testament to Adichie’s TED Talk on the danger of a single story. She does not present an isolated narrative of terror, nor one of a victim and perpetrator. Rather, she provides a nuanced account of the Biafran War, and as a result, she empowers and humanizes her characters. A recurring mantra in the novel—“the world was silent when we died”—refers to the global inaction in light of the Nigerians who fell prey to starvation and disease, or were slaughtered by military forces on either side.

Biafra was an abandoned and unrecognized state, which only caught the attention of Western journalists and photographers who, for the most part, wished to reassert the image of Africa as a continent riddled with disease, poverty, and violence. However, this book gives voice to the survivors and causalities of the war. Half of a Yellow Sun provides the reader with an experience that humbles, informs, and ensures that such stories are not lost in history. It is a tale that eloquently demonstrates what it means to be human, to confront your own mortality, to fight for a cause, to be vulnerable, and to be at war with oneself in the midst of political turmoil.

Notes 1. Colin Freeman, Telegraph , Jan. 21, 2017, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/21/man-fighting-independence-tiny-west-african-nation-biafra-council/ .

Cynthia Alexandre-Brutus

Cynthia Alexandre-Brutus was previously the program intern for the African Peacebuilding Network with the Social Science Research Council. She recently graduated from the University of Paris XII with a master's degree in International Project Management and Development Economics. Her core research interests include civil society and governance, social/cultural movements, and conflict resolution within the African diaspora.

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[Book Review] Half of a Yellow Sun

Pooja Ramakrishnan read Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, a somewhat older book that tackles topics such as identity, nationalism and relationships with stunning clarity.

This month has been a sobering one for the world. The tragedy at Christchurch shocked us awake and when followed by the unprecedented incident in Utrecht, it was all too close to home for many of us. Since fiction offers me a brief reprieve from contemplating the various -isms and -phobias that exist in our world, I randomly selected Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun to read a few weeks ago.

Adichie hails from Nigeria and is one of the most compelling authors/speakers shaping the feminist narrative currently out there. Her previous fictional work, Americanah , that I had read in 2015, was relatable and had a lilting, familiar flow to it. It tackles topics such as identity, nationalism and relationships with stunning clarity. It became immediately apparent on reading her work that she is an excellent observer of the world around her. Furthermore, she possesses an admirable self-awareness that allows her to write characters with unique personalities. Adichie is also deceptively skilled at making readers support morally ambiguous personalities in her stories.

Chimamanda pens with chilling precision the horrors of blind rage

Half of the Yellow Sun is set in 1970s Nigeria and leans towards being categorised as historical fiction. It follows twin sisters, Olanna and Kainene, as they navigate, in their very different ways, the conflict within their nation. The novel explores their relationships, their insecurities against the backdrop of Nigeria’s Civil War, otherwise known as the Biafran War. The book paints an unbiased picture of the geographical and political divide between the Igbo and Hausa communities. The storyline is filled with the drama of a coup followed by a counter-coup that leads to the birth of the nation of Biafra.

Chimamanda pens with chilling precision the horrors of blind rage, of misplaced justice in wartime and of the many things that can divide us. There is a telling scene in the book: Olanna is approached by a Hausa stranger who treats her warmly but as soon as he learns that she is Igbo, his hospitality disappears almost immediately.

Despite being a book about a land I have never lived in or visited, the communal disharmony within the nation are all too relatable. The elections here, in India and the ones next year in the US have all sparked dialogues regarding the treatment and representation of minority communities. While on this same subject, it is encouraging to read a popular novel that is not filled with characters called Joe and Jane. Rather, the book is beautifully peppered with local words that add to the ambience and tone of the book. Adichie’s excellent English vocabulary is only complemented by her descriptions of patterned boubous , making of garri and akara and using terms of endearment like nkem . 

Without giving much away, I can state that Half of the Yellow Sun tackles race, politics and everything relevant today in the most personal and descriptive manner possible. Although I turned towards fiction to distract myself, I was rewarded with a deeply insightful story. If you have some time to sit under our yellow sun, here’s a book you can enjoy this spring.

• Half of a Yellow Sun,  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, €  9,99, bol.com . 

Pooja Ramakrishnan is studying MSc Environmental Engineering and has joined the Delta team as our book and podcast pundit. A science student during the day and a poet by night, she balances the two with her curiosity and fascination for the world we live in.

Pooja Ramakrishnan / Freelance journalist

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Half of a Yellow Sun Paperback – September 4, 2007

• Print length 543 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Vintage
• Publication date September 4, 2007
• Dimensions 5.18 x 0.93 x 7.94 inches
• ISBN-10 1400095204
• ISBN-13 978-1400095209
• See all details

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage (September 4, 2007)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 543 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1400095204
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1400095209
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.18 x 0.93 x 7.94 inches
• #8 in African Literature (Books)
• #263 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
• #2,322 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the author

Chimamanda ngozi adichie.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE's work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker and Granta. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus; Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize; Americanah, which won the NBCC Award and was a New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Entertainment Weekly Best Book of the Year; the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck; and the essay We Should All Be Feminists. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.

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Customers find the emotional tone heavy and painful, but they also love the writing. They describe the content as fascinating, engaging, and honest. Readers say the characters are well-developed and believable. They also describe the writing quality as amazing and upsetting. Customers describe the emotional impact as deeply moving, gripping, and sensitive. They mention the plot as highly nuanced and with lots of turns.

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Customers find the writing quality of the book amazing, high quality, and upsetting. They also mention that the author is an amazing storyteller.

"...I finally had a chance to experience it. What a great book !..." Read more

"Adeichi is an amazing story teller . The stories within the main story were extremely thought provoking and exhilarating...." Read more

"...The setting is complex and the story is intricately layered . The plot twists and turns unexpectedly; surprises lurk in every corner...." Read more

"...novel will not meet the taste of every reader, but it is a very high quality work . Thank You for taking the time to read this review..." Read more

Customers find the book fascinating, insightful, and heartwarming. They also appreciate the depth of research and clever structure. Readers also mention that the book is the most honest observation of race in America.

"...Kainene is not considered to be attractive. She's somewhat aloof, very intelligent and financially savvy, and her relationship with Richard is..." Read more

"...The stories within the main story were extremely thought provoking and exhilarating...." Read more

"...In studying the author I came upon this novel and found it is very celebrated and author quite noteworthy...." Read more

"...Ngozi Adichie brings this terrible story to life in clear, powerful prose , and creates fully human characters, with all the flaws and internal..." Read more

Customers find the writing in the book heartbreaking and uplifting. They also appreciate the author's voice and the simple, beautiful prose. Readers say the book is easy to sympathize with and the feelings evoked and the poignant senses awakened are awaken by the simple prose and beautiful writing.

"...The author knows how to write , and although this is a work of fiction, the information about the civil war was very informative...." Read more

"...Yet Adichie couldn't have done a more brilliant job, her prose is simple and effortless but surprisingly it has not reduced or belittled the..." Read more

"...Ugwu is easy to sympathize with , though he never questions his position, and often has little sympathy for others...." Read more

"...novel is perhaps one of the best novels I have read, and her writing is so beautiful and descriptive that I feel her work has already become timeless..." Read more

Customers find the characters in the book well developed, believable, and realistic. They also mention that the author's response to the challenges is overwhelmingly human and realistic, making the book a great read.

"...but because the writing had moments of humor and the characters were so interesting , it helped to take my mind off the horrors of war. READ IT!" Read more

"...this terrible story to life in clear, powerful prose, and creates fully human characters , with all the flaws and internal inconsistencies inherent..." Read more

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Customers find the book emotionally taxing, with examples of both powerful compassion and inhumanity. They also describe it as a tragic piece of history brought to life by this wonderfully written book. Customers also say it's a beautiful, intriguing, disturbing, and compelling novel. They say it emphasizes redemption, the unbreakable bonds of family, and sisterhood.

"A stirring, heartbreaking account of the Nigerian Civil War, as seen through the eyes of three very different characters...." Read more

"...This is an emotional novel , and she builds the emotions over time...." Read more

"...But that's okay. This is a page turner and a humane telling of a conflict lost to the blind ambitions of the Big Powers and the ego-maniacs that..." Read more

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Customers find the history fascinating, nuanced, and emotional. They also say the politics are complex, and the book has a lot of action and turns.

"...one of America's most promising young writers (20 under 40), brilliantly retold history that was richly infused with color, character and emotions,..." Read more

""Half of a Yellow Sun" is an excellent historical fiction about a Civil War in Nigeria in the 1960s, along with the lives of numerous individuals..." Read more

"...I highly recommend this book. Though intense, it is infused with some romantic entanglements , resentments, confusion, -everything one may expect to..." Read more

"...This is an emotional novel, and she builds the emotions over time ...." Read more

Customers find the book deeply moving, gripping, and sustained throughout. They also say the effect is visceral, touching, and informative. Readers also say it takes them from page to page with lots of action and turns.

"10/10 would def recommend. Great story. Moving and still humorous." Read more

"... You truly feel each POV . The storyline back & forth captures your attention & makes you want to read on to find out what happened...." Read more

"...'s demise and throws herself to the ground in utter grief, the affect is visceral ...." Read more

"...throughout the period before and during the Biafran revolution is intense , powerful and compelling...." Read more

Customers are mixed about the writing style. Some mention that the writing had moments of humor, is poignant, delicate, riveting, and colorful. However, others say that it wasn't profound, too intellectual to identify with, and failed to make her work interesting. They also say the plot languished with gratuitous violence and the details are harsh.

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"10/10 would def recommend. Great story. Moving and still humorous ." Read more

"...opinion interesting, but possibly still a bit sketchy still, lacking sometimes in depth , yet they are not the focus of the book; The weave of all..." Read more

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Reading guide for Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Summary  |  Excerpt  |  Reading Guide  |  Reviews  |  Beyond the Book  |  Read-Alikes  |  Genres & Themes  |  Author Bio

Half of a Yellow Sun

• BookBrowse Review:
• Critics' Consensus:
• Readers' Rating:
• First Published:
• Sep 12, 2006, 448 pages
• Sep 2007, 528 pages

• Literary Fiction
• Northern & Western Africa
• 20th Century (multiple decades)
• Black Authors
• War Related
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About this Book

• Reading Guide

Reading Guide Questions

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• Ugwu is only thirteen when he begins working as a houseboy for Odenigbo, but he is one of the most intelligent and observant characters in the novel. How well does Ugwu manage the transition from village life to the intellectual and privileged world of his employers? How does his presence throughout affect the reader's experience of the story?
• About her attraction to Odenigbo, Olanna thinks, "The intensity had not abated after two years, nor had her awe at his self-assured eccentricities and his fierce moralities" [p. 36]. What is attractive about Odenigbo? How does Adichie poke fun at certain aspects of his character? How does the war change him?   
• Adichie touches very lightly on a connection between the Holocaust and the Biafran situation [p. 62]; why does she not stress this parallel more strongly? Why are the Igbo massacred by the Hausa? What tribal resentments and rivalries are expressed in the Nigerian-Biafran war? In what ways does the novel make clear that these rivalries have been intensified by British interference?
• Consider the conversation between Olanna and Kainene on pp. 130-131. What are the sources of the distance and distrust between the two sisters, and how is the rift finally overcome? What is the effect of the disappearance of Kainene on the ending of the story?
• Discuss the ways in which Adichie reveals the differences in social class among her characters. What are the different cultural assumptions—about themselves and others—made by educated Africans like Odenigbo, nouveau riche Africans like Olanna's parents, uneducated Africans like Odenigbo's mother, and British expatriates like Richard's ex-girlfriend Susan?
• Excerpts from a book called The World Was Silent When We Died appear on pp. 103, 146, 195, 256, 296, 324, 470, and 541. Who is writing this book? What does it tell us? Why is it inserted into the story in parts?  
• Adichie breaks the chronological sequence of her story so that she can delay the revelation that Baby is not Olanna's child and that Olanna had a brief liaison with Richard. What are the effects of this delay, and of these revelations, on your reading experience?
• Susan Grenville-Pitts is a stereotype of the colonial occupier with her assertion that "It's quite extraordinaryÉ how these people can't control their hatred of each other... . Civilization teaches you control" [p. 194]. Richard, on the other hand, wants to be African, learns to speak Igbo, and says "we" when he speaks of Biafra. What sort of person is Richard? How do you explain his desires?
• Adichie makes a point of displaying Olanna's middle-class frame of mind: she is disgusted at the cockroach eggs in her cousins' house reluctant to let Baby mix with village children because they have lice, and so on. How is her privileged outlook changed by the war?
• The poet Okeoma, in praise of the new Biafra, wrote, "If the sun refuses to rise, we will make it rise" [p. 219]. Does Adichie seem to represent the Biafran secession as a doomed exercise in political naiveté or as a desperate bid for survival on the part of a besieged ethnic group? Given the history of Nigeria and Britain's support during the war, is the defeat of Biafra a foregone conclusion?
• The sisters' relationship is damaged further when Olanna seduces Richard [p. 293]. Why does Olanna do this? If she is taking revenge upon Odenigbo for his infidelity, why does she choose Richard? What does Kainene mean when she bitterly calls Olanna "the good one" [p. 318]?
• How does being witnesses to violent death change people in the story—Olanna, Kainene, Odenigbo, Ugwu? How does Adichie handle descriptions of scenes of violence, death, and famine?
• What goes through Ugwu's mind as he participates in the rape of the bar girl [p. 457]? How does he feel about it later, when he learns that his sister was also gang-raped [pp. 497, 526]?
• The novel is structured in part around two love stories, between Olanna and Odenigbo and between Kainene and Richard.  It is "really a story of love," Adichie has said ( Financial Times , September 9, 2006). How does Adichie handle romantic and sexual love? Why are these love plots so important to a novel about a war?
• The story begins as Ugwu's aunty describes to Ugwu his new employer: "Master was a little crazy; he had spent too many years reading books overseas, talked to himself in his office, did not always return greetings, and had too much hair" [p. 3]. It ends with Ugwu's dedication of his book: " For Master, my good man " [p. 541]. Consider how Ugwu's relation to his master has changed throughout the course of the story.
• How is it fitting that Ugwu, and not Richard, should be the one who writes the story of the war and his people?
• In a recent interview Adichie said, "My family tells me that I must be old. This is a book I had to write because it's my way of looking at this history that defines me and making sense of it." (She recently turned twenty-nine, and based parts of the story on her family's experiences during that time and also on a great deal of reading.) "I didn't want to just write about events," Adichie said. "I wanted to put a human face on them" ( The New York Times , September 23, 2006). Why is it remarkable that a woman so young could write a novel of this scope and depth?  

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Anchor Books. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.

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