Jump to content

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie


Polka Dot Rock

Recommended Posts

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 

Paperback: 448 pages

Publisher: HarperPerennial (15 Jan 2007)

Language English

ISBN-10: 0007200285

ISBN-13: 978-0007200283

 

The blurb from the back

This highly anticipated novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is set in Nigeria during the 1960s, at the time of a vicious civil war in which a million people died and thousands were massacred in cold blood.

The three main characters in the novel are swept up in the violence during these turbulent years: One is a young boy from a poor village who is employed at a university lecturer's house. The other is a young middle-class woman, Olanna, who has to confront the reality of the massacre of her relatives. And the third is a white man, a writer who lives in Nigeria for no clear reason, and who falls in love with Olanna's twin sister, a remote and enigmatic character.

As these people's lives intersect, they have to question their own responses to the unfolding political events.

This extraordinary novel is about Africa in a wider sense: about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race; and about the ways in which love can complicate all of these things.

 

Winner of this year

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

I think I'm in a tiny minority, but I really didn't like this books at all. I couldn't even be bothered to finish it in the end as I realised I was actively avoiding reading and doing displacement activities such as voluntarily doing the dishes or other household tasks I usually avoid like the plague! Even Dale noticed something was up!

 

My review HERE.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think I'm in a tiny minority, but I really didn't like this books at all. I couldn't even be bothered to finish it in the end...

 

I can see how you felt that way! I read your review, too, BTW, which was refreshingly honest. But I was just so drawn in by the writer's descriptive style and I liked the, I guess, earnestness of the characters. I even liked Richard and his blind adoration of his new country. It was just so gritty and unfailingly real, yet dreamlike and beautiful.

The sisters' relationship at the end was so satisfying for me, and I thought Kainene was right in her reasons for finally forgiving Olanna. I had a hard time, though, forgiving Ugwu -- but then so did he. And the whole back story about Baby and her poor mother really got to me. Poor Odenigbo and his failed revolution, he really fell apart, didn't he? I thought the author was so skillful in creating sympathy in the end for Odenigbo's mother and letting us see a reformed Kainene.

And the other thing is I can draw so many parallels between this book and its story of war and the current state of affairs in the Middle East.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

I didn't enjoy this book very much, as for some reason I couldn't stick with it for more than about 20 minutes at a time and I kept getting distracted.

 

While the main characters were interesting, I was not compelled by them, and I felt that while there were three main protagonists, Odenigbo and Kainene were also essential to the plot, yet they weren't given their own chapters, and they felt underwritten and there was not enough of their characters development.

 

For me, it didn

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...