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Half of a Yellow Sun
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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About This Book
ISBN13: 9781400044160 |
Awards
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by the Washington Post Book World as "the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe," Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed.
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 the three 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 the ways in which love can complicate them all. Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise and the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place, bringing us one of the most powerful, dramatic, and intensely emotional pictures of modern Africa that we have ever had.
Review:
"When the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria seceded in 1967 to form the independent nation of Biafra, a bloody, crippling three-year civil war followed. That period in African history is captured with haunting intimacy in this artful page-turner from Nigerian novelist Adichie (Purple Hibiscus). Adichie tells her profoundly gripping story primarily through the eyes and lives of Ugwu, a 13-year-old peasant houseboy who survives conscription into the raggedy Biafran army, and twin sisters Olanna and Kainene, who are from a wealthy and well-connected family. Tumultuous politics power the plot, and several sections are harrowing, particularly passages depicting the savage butchering of Olanna and Kainene's relatives. But this dramatic, intelligent epic has its lush and sultry side as well: rebellious Olanna is the mistress of Odenigbo, a university professor brimming with anticolonial zeal; business-minded Kainene takes as her lover fair-haired, blue-eyed Richard, a British expatriate come to Nigeria to write a book about Igbo-Ukwu art — and whose relationship with Kainene nearly ruptures when he spends one drunken night with Olanna. This is a transcendent novel of many descriptive triumphs, most notably its depiction of the impact of war's brutalities on peasants and intellectuals alike. It's a searing history lesson in fictional form, intensely evocative and immensely absorbing. (Sept. 15)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"[H]ere is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers....[Adichie] is fearless..." Chinua Achebe
Review:
"Astonishing...fierce and beautifully written....Half of a Yellow Sun is honest and cutting, and always, always human, always loving....[A]mbitious, impeccably researched....Penetrating...epic and confident. Adichie refuses to look away." Binyavanga Wainaina, author of Discovering Home
Review:
"When I think of how many European and American writers rehash the themes of suburban adultery or unhappy childhood, I look with awe and envy at this young woman from Africa who is recording the history of her country. She is fortunate — and we, her readers, are even luckier." Edmund White
Review:
"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
Review:
"With searching insight, compassion and an unexpected yet utterly appropriate touch of wit, Adichie has created an extraordinary book, a worthy addition to the world's great tradition of large-visioned, powerfully realistic novels." Los Angeles Times
Review:
"Although there is nothing ostentatiously writerly about the straightforward style of Half of a Yellow Sun, Ms. Adichie can make a large, resonant gesture when need be." Janet Maslin, New York Times
Review:
"Adichie, born seven years after the war, puts a powerfully human face on this sobering story, which is far from over." Seattle Times
Review:
"This book confirms the notion that if you want to understand a country's past, certainly you should read historical and economic texts. If you want to understand its soul, however, read its fiction." Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review:
"Adichie's clear-sighted examination reveals how quickly national loyalties, even when rooted in seemingly just causes, can become entangled with self-absorption, denial and even cruelty." Newsday
Synopsis:
Adichie recreates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria during the 1960s. She weaves together the lives of five characters caught up in the extraordinary tumult of the decade.
Synopsis:
With her award-winning debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was heralded by the Washington Post Book World as "the 21st century daughter of Chinua Achebe." Now, in her masterly, haunting new novel, she recreates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria during the 1960s.
With the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Adichie weaves together the lives of five characters caught up in the extraordinary tumult of the decade. Fifteen-year-old Ugwu is houseboy to Odenigbo, a university professor who sends him to school, and in whose living room Ugwu hears voices full of revolutionary zeal. Odenigbo's beautiful mistress, Olanna, a sociology teacher, is running away from her parents' world of wealth and excess; Kainene, her urbane twin, is taking over their father's business; and Kainene's English lover, Richard, forms a bridge between their two worlds. As we follow these intertwined lives through a military coup, the Biafran secession and the subsequent war, Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise, and intimately, the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place.
Epic, ambitious and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a more powerful, dramatic and intensely emotional picture of modern Africa than any we have had before.
About the Author
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was also short-listed for the Orange Prize and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta and the Iowa Review among other literary journals, and she received an O. Henry Prize in 2003. She is a 2005–2006 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University and divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.
What Our Readers Are Saying
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Average customer rating based on 6 comments:
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j_sochi, March 7, 2008 (view all comments by j_sochi)
I AM STILL SEARCHING FOR THIS BOOK, BUT BY WHAT AM READING THROUGH THE NET, I CAN STILL RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO EVERY CULTURE LOVING IGBO MAN.
THE AFTERMATHS OF THE BIAFRA WAR IS ALSO SCORCHING ME, IN FACT I LOVE THIS NOVEL, IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
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sweat, June 10, 2007 (view all comments by sweat)
it is a good thing when history is not forgotten.
now , the question is what do we do withat history and what lessons have we learned from that history? i am a nigerian with a mixed heritage between yoruba and benin. i cannot imagine myself beng an igbo and the suffering i would suffered in that period of unrest in nigerian history. and i think that yoruba and igbos should formed a unit against the hausas...in the north.
but, having said that ...i don't think that any country would have allowed part of her country to break-away peacefully..no matter how noble the cause. if there was a biafran- republic, which would include the people from delta region, and remember the delta has the largest oil reserve in nigeria. do you think the igbos would allow them to break away peacefully..if they decide to do so for whatever reason?
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Ayodeji Olayemi, May 11, 2007 (view all comments by Ayodeji Olayemi)
HALF OF A YELLOW SUN
Leafing through ?Half of a Yellow Sun? on the shelf of our university bookshop, I almost didn?t take it. But after settling down on a sofa at home to turn the first page, I just couldn?t drop the novel. What I would have missed!
I first came in contact with Chimamanda?s style in ?Purple Hibiscus?, her maiden novel. I would describe her first book as great writing. But Half of a Yellow Sun is a quantum leap, unveiling additional aspects to the author, evolving down many paths, and exploring ? with admirable comfort - a subject as imposing as the Nigerian civil war. Great writing, and a great story.
Here again Chimamada is the master of delicious detail, first-rate for expressing the most private thoughts and feelings, sometimes with an eerie bent ? like the whole passage where she describes Ugwu lying wounded in a hospital, half dreaming. And in this book the characters take on real flesh and blood; there?s drama.
The plot starts out simply enough, then, slyly, slips into the most unexpected twists. Peaceful nights of wine and intellectual argument in a university community are taken over by days in a bunker with screaming bombs overhead, starvation and stark inhumanity. Twin sisters, who were not the best of friends to begin with, find themselves involved in a love triangle that, paradoxically, along with the war and all the other traumatic experiences that alter their lives, serves to drive them closer.
I?ll not be forgetting the characters in a hurry:
Odenigbo ? Confident, strong and sure of himself. The series of life-changing events that span the book, however, wear him down and leave him exhausted in the end, a husk of his former self.
Olanna ? Strikingly beautiful. Her rich parents expect her to marry a rich suitor to expand the family business. But instead she falls in love with Odenigbo and her whole role in the book seems defined by, and appears to revolve round, him. This love is to lead her down a descending spiral of circumstances and situations ? being cheated upon, living in unaccustomed squalor, carrying a baby around for Odenigbo through the war; a baby that was not born by her. Are her actions borne out of a high sense of steadfastness or low self-esteem?
Kainene ? Olanna?s enigmatic twin sister, blowing perfect smoke-rings from her cigarette and coolly pronouncing judgement on others. When she speaks it is with an acerbic, biting wit. It is interesting that Kainene turned out herself to be the greatest irony of all - she, the most unlikely person, became in the end the strength and rallying point that all the others turned to. And then she disappeared from the scene?suddenly, utterly.
Half of a Yellow Sun is much more than just an enjoyable novel, it carries promise and stature. It is written by a Nigerian, about a Nigerian setting. But its quality will be appreciated by any eyes that encounter it ? black or white, Nigerian or foreign. It is indeed a classic, representing the leading edge of Nigerian literature for our time, the way Chinua Achebe?s ?Things Fall Apart? was during his ? but now maybe even more so.
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Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9781400044160
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Alfred A. Knopf
- Author:
- Subject:
- Literary
- Subject:
- History
- Subject:
- Nigeria
- Edition Description:
- North American
- Publication Date:
- September 2006
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 435
- Dimensions:
- 9.56x6.60x1.48 in. 1.69 lbs.
