Half of a Yellow Sun

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Rating: 5 (14 votes)

Tags: Set in Nigeria Female author War

Half of a Yellow Sun

Description:
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • From the award-winning, bestselling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists—a haunting story of love and war. • Recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Winner of Winners” award. With effortless grace, celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who has abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene. Half of a Yellow Sun is a tremendously evocative novel of the promise, hope, and disappointment of the Biafran war.

Reviews:

Read Around The World Challenge user profile avatar for Joanna
(3 months ago)
14 Jul, 2024
Another 4 stars book, I seem to be choosing some good books which I am enjoying and well written. This book has been around since 2006 and it hauting, harring and down right scary. There are some quite crude descriptions, emotional hard hardhitting, I had no idea they would be in the book, not that I am complaining, after all the book is about a civil war. Of all the main characters, my favourite is Ugwu he was always so loyal to his master. I didn’t like the idea that the Olanna and Odenigbo didn’t name their child, only called her Baby. There was great descriptions, the details of the country, people and the war. Having no idea about the country and location of the cities described in the book, I found it difficult to visualize the distances and locations, I checked out maps online to give me an idea. I decided to go the extra and watch the film, I found the film a little glorified, there wasn’t the brutal descriptions (obviously, it is a film) but there wasn’t anything that really showed how brutal a civil war actually is.

Add comment

More books from Nigeria

A Spell of Good Things Remote Control In the Ditch

More books from Read Around Africa Challenge

Der Schattenkönig So Distant From My Life The Blunder