Half Of A Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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 they must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another.

Well, let me take a deep breath before I begin.  Whew. This was far and away the best novel I have read since The Book Thief.  The book is based on the Nigeria-Biafra  War of 1967-70.  The story is told through the eyes of three characters.  Ugwu, the houseboy to a professor with radical ideas.  Olanna, the professor’s girlfriend, and Richard  a white Englishman who is in Africa to study and write a book.  

We meet all of the characters pre-war, so we get to take that terrible journey with them, to see how they are transformed and how their intersecting lives and relationships are affected.  When properly done, I really enjoy books with multiple narrators.  It lets you  experience the story through different perspectives.  It’s actually quite amazing that a book can allow you to walk in the shoes of three different people and experience their thoughts and their lives.  Not only are the main narrators amazing, but the book is filled with many other extremely well drawn, and memorable characters.  Reading this book felt a little like watching a movie in which all of the scenes are put together with careful precision. 

The writing felt effortless and graceful.  As one critic said, “The prose is admirable, but we’re not meant to admire it. We’re meant to stare through the glass until it disappears, for Adichie possesses a nineteenth-century confidence in the sufficiencies of traditional narrative…” — Will Blythe, Elle Magazine, October 2006.

I also appreciate the fact that even though the book is about a civil war, I didn’t feel the book was mired down with too much politics.  There was enough there to understand the major points of the conflicts without being bogged down with details and political dialogue.  The focus remained on the characters and how they were dealing with such extreme circumstances.

There is one more detail I cannot leave out.  The setting.  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in the same region that the book was set in, so she had very clear images to draw from in her book and she does so brilliantly.  She really created a three dimensional world that I felt like I could reach out and touch.  I could feel the dust in my nose, and dirt on my feet.  This is what I love about books.  The power they have to transport you to places you would otherwise never go to or even imagine. 

Now when I hear or see something about Africa, I will remember the places I have been in this book.  I will think about a war I previously knew nothing about.  I will remember the names, Ugwu, Olanna, Odenigbo, Kainene.  I will appreciate that I have this knowledge.

Arize was laughing.  her plump body, her rounded arms, shook as she laughed.  Olanna held her close.  She felt a sense that things were in order, the way they were meant to be, and that even if they tumbled down once in a while, in the end they would come back together again.  This is why she came to Kano: this lucid peace.

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BITS AND PIECES

The Biafran flag, which inspired the title: Half of a Yellow Sun.

To go to the website for Half of a Yellow Sun, click here.

To read an excerpt from the book, click here.

To hear an NPR interview with Chimamanda Ngosi Adichie, go here.  It’s excellent!  I can’t beleive she’s only 29!  Wow!

Chimamanda Ngosi Adichie also wrote Purple Hibiscus, a book that has been on my TBR list FOREVER.