Half a Yellow Sun
by: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Published by: Anchor Books
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Reviewed by Michele Heather Pollock
It is the late 1960s. In Africa, the small nation of Biafra struggles to establish a republic independent from Nigeria. The world is not paying attention as people are slaughtered, as heroes are born, as classes and ethnic groups clash and fight and flee.
Amidst this backdrop of turmoil, you meet Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old boy just hired as a houseboy by Odenigbo, a university professor and revolutionary. You follow Odenigbo and his girlfriend Olanna as they abandon one house after another, fleeing with Ugwu, trying to stay one step ahead of the front line of the war. You travel with Richard, a young Englishman who considers himself a citizen of this new nation of Biafra, as he navigates the war and pursues Olanna’s proud and beautiful twin sister Kainene. You get a glimpse, through these characters, into the chaos and instability that is the daily lives of those affected by war.
Adichie’s new novel is ambitious – it manages simultaneously to be both broad in scope and intimate in its details. Her writing is beautiful, and her characters so well fleshed out that you keep thinking about them, wondering what will happen to them, long after the book is done. There is death here, yes, but there is also birth and friendship and lust. There is hunger, but there is also generosity and truth. Adichie does an excellent job portraying the surreal coexistence of the fear and devastation of war with the more mundane, but perhaps even more painful, struggles to maintain some semblance of “normal” life – meals prepared and eaten, school attended, marriages planned and babies conceived.
Adichie’s novel is a window into the past, into a place that most of us have never been. The clash and coincidence of the love story and the war epic render Half a Yellow Sun into the kind of fiction that is often more telling, more evocative of a particular point in history, than any strictly historic account could ever be.
Armchair Interviews says: The book makes you feel the characters struggle in a way that only the best fiction can.
Author’s Web site: http://www.l3.ulg.ac.be/adichie/
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