Polka Dot Rock
19th July 2007, 15:52
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’s Orange Prize and I can see why: a readable yet intense and often disturbing novel set just before, during and hardly after the Biafra war in Nigeria.
I thought the characters were well conceived and believable (at times, they are all too human). Orlanna was a good choice as a narrative ‘pivot’ and I liked that Richard’s occasionally naïve ways (such as his over-compensatory ‘Biafran-ness’) were frequently used throughout.
One of the most memorable scenes in the novel has to be the horrific attack in Kano, when one character discovers the corpses of close family, before narrowly escaping a similar fate.
Yet, for all backdrop of war, this novel uses the emotional and domestic lives of its characters to really heighten a sense of what was going on in Nigeria at the time. Half of a Yellow Sun has been compared to many classic, Victorian-era novels, and it’s Adichie’s use of letting the reader into the everyday lives and minds of her characters that enables us to care so much for them. Thus, when the war does occur, you fear for their lives.
I was also interested that Adichie used mainly middle-class Nigerian characters and also explored this social group: it isn’t a perspective of African life that readers frequently stumble across.
An utterly human and sobering account of a war I knew little about. Half of a Yellow Sun has rekindled my interest in contemporary African literature and I will definitely be reading more of Adichie in the future.
9/10 (Started 25 June – Finished 27 June)
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’s Orange Prize and I can see why: a readable yet intense and often disturbing novel set just before, during and hardly after the Biafra war in Nigeria.
I thought the characters were well conceived and believable (at times, they are all too human). Orlanna was a good choice as a narrative ‘pivot’ and I liked that Richard’s occasionally naïve ways (such as his over-compensatory ‘Biafran-ness’) were frequently used throughout.
One of the most memorable scenes in the novel has to be the horrific attack in Kano, when one character discovers the corpses of close family, before narrowly escaping a similar fate.
Yet, for all backdrop of war, this novel uses the emotional and domestic lives of its characters to really heighten a sense of what was going on in Nigeria at the time. Half of a Yellow Sun has been compared to many classic, Victorian-era novels, and it’s Adichie’s use of letting the reader into the everyday lives and minds of her characters that enables us to care so much for them. Thus, when the war does occur, you fear for their lives.
I was also interested that Adichie used mainly middle-class Nigerian characters and also explored this social group: it isn’t a perspective of African life that readers frequently stumble across.
An utterly human and sobering account of a war I knew little about. Half of a Yellow Sun has rekindled my interest in contemporary African literature and I will definitely be reading more of Adichie in the future.
9/10 (Started 25 June – Finished 27 June)