Half of a Yellow Sun Kindle Edition

I came into Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun not knowing much about the Biafran conflict. I came out feeling as if I’d just lived through the experience. “Moving” is the most appropriate term for this novel. Adichie doesn’t just write about the failure of a new state trying to gain independence from Nigeria. She doesn’t just write about a couple of love stories during war, or family relationships that took place during war. What she does so masterfully and deliciously is capture the dreams and hopes and vision of Biafra, paint it so clearly that the reader can taste it, and then take it all away slowly, deliberately, painfully… mimicking what those who lived through the conflict probably felt. Her ability to capture the dramatic life-altering experiences of Biafra is astonishing. When I put down the book, I felt as if I’d just experienced the conflict through my own eyes. Essentially, the book is about chronicling the tone and feel of the Biafran conflict. She leaves the reader wanting Biafra, needing Biafra, and feeling remorse for the consequences of its failure (not a spoiler – her plot is carved into history). Nigeria in the 1960s was a society entangled in ethnic troubles and then civil war. The genocide inflicted on the Igbo people is horrible and tragic. Through the war they suffered and starved, eventually bringing Biafra to its knees. This part of her story is one of the most powerful, and where Adichie really flexes her literary muscles. How she is able to have starvation permeate her imagined world, effecting each character and the world around them, is fantastic. How Adichie was able to capture the pain and torment in such a realistic way is beyond me. Her depth of research also becomes apparent here, regularly – but not obnoxiously – dropping in facts and names of organizations and people who were there during the conflict. Adichie’s argument and motive for writing such a work was to chronicle with as much accuracy as possible the tone and feel of that conflict. She leaves the reader wanting Biafra, needing Biafra, and feeling remorse for the consequences of its failure (not a spoiler – her plot is carved into history). I can guarantee you will put down this book and go straight to your computer to research this event. The length of the work is one of the few complaints I have. In Adichie’s obsessive need to create the world of Biafra as realistically for the reader as possible, her details can slow the pacing. This is an emotional novel, and she builds the emotions over time. Also, don’t be expecting to laugh – you barely will. Yet, if you are looking for a work that will move you and your worldview, this is the one. I highly recommend.

Half of a Yellow Sun is historical fiction and a fine-written novel. It concerns the history of Nigeria and the war. The characters are very well developed and very interesting. Adichie is a fabulous writer. The story is never boring and there were some interesting character viewpoints. One point of interest was discovering the anti-Semitism that existed within Nigeria or the outright ignorance of some of Nigeria's citizens. A long Muslim vs Christian war or battle has had a terrible effect on Nigeria. The use of oppressive tactics akin to Hitler's 3rd Reich was used within Nigeria to squelch the Christian intellectual party and its citizens by a brutal regime of ignorant religious extremists who oppress girls and women, and hinder educational systems. This is absolutely a fabulously written account with historical facts that is written with fictionally orientated characters to add dynamic realism and dimensions. Adichi herself, is highly intelligent, brilliant, and a prize writer from Nigeria. The book has over 500 pages, so expect to spend some time digesting the contents and comprehending some of Nigeria's immense history. Adichi is one of your better writers on the market.

A stirring, heartbreaking account of the Nigerian Civil War, as seen through the eyes of three very different characters. The novel starts in the early sixties, not long after the end of British colonial rule, presenting a nation, Nigeria, that did not exist before the British invented it. As the British continue to meddle in the shadows, the disparate peoples of newly independent Nigeria are left to figure out how to coexist. We are introduced to this world by Ugwu, a village boy who has just landed a coveted position as a houseboy for a university professor, Odenigbo. Through the perspectives of Ugwu, Odenigbo’s lover Olanna, and British expat Richard, the story of the rise and horrific fall of the breakaway state of Biafra is told.Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie brings this terrible story to life in clear, powerful prose, and creates fully human characters, with all the flaws and internal inconsistencies inherent in the human condition. Ugwu is easy to sympathize with, though he never questions his position, and often has little sympathy for others. Expat Richard is a good man who desperately wants to be seen as different from the other white men in the country, but can not grasp the extent of his privilege. Odenigbo and his band of academics are full of revolutionary zeal, but steadfastly refuse to consider what consequences the realization of their ideals might bring. One of the things I really liked was the dichotomy between twin sisters Olanna and Kainene. Olanna is the more outwardly idealistic of the pair, the one who makes a show of eschewing her family’s status to move in with her academic lover, while fatalistic Kainene takes over aspects of the family’s sprawling business interests. When the war breaks out Olanna suffers much more than her sister, who rides out most of the conflict in relative comfort. But it’s Kainene who sees with clearer eyes and uses her privilege to render aid, while Olanna never manages to rid herself of her bourgeois haughtiness.This is a novel written by an Igbo author about Igbo characters, and the atrocities committed against the majority Igbo Biafrans by the Nigerians are well known and well documented, but Adichie here has the courage not to show the Igbo as entirely blameless. Biafra has its own corruption, and the Igbo commit their own atrocities born out of prejudice. We have a tendency to simplify historic wars, to gloss over complexities and hide from truths that don’t fit easily within the prevailing narrative. In Half of a Yellow Sun Adichie thankfully doesn’t do this.

I loved this book, it's now firmly in my top 10 of all time. It's beautiful and visceral and funny and devastating. Adichie is seriously talented, it feels as if every word is just... perfectly chosen. I loved all the characters (especially Ugwu) and the way they all develop realistically over the course of the book. I've never been to Nigeria, but the setting and characters felt closer and more real to me than any book I've read set in wartime Europe, which is really impressive (to me as a European). It's also a perfect example of historical fiction - you come away with a nuanced understanding of a time and place you'll never experience in real life.

I'm so conflicted about this book which I desperately wanted to love: it's an important story and one that, as Adichie herself says, needs to be told by an African writer - but my feeling is that the story of Biafra is too huge to be contained within a 400pp. 'popular' novel that also wants to tell personal stories of two couples, fraught family relationships, the education of a 'house-boy'...There are times when this got too soapy for my tastes and the result is a kind of historically-lite tale that presses an awful lot of standard fictional buttons.I guess I wanted more in-depth politics: the lead up to the secession of Biafra is quite powerfully done - but then suddenly it just exists and is at war and things get vague - we learn, for example, that there are Biafran car number-plates, a separate currency but no sense of any of these markers of a new state being established. And I wanted to understand more about the role of oil which, we learn, Biafra is still extracting and refining under the bombing of the Nigerian forces. Even the famous famine doesn't feel as visceral as it should as there's so much else going on - not least the enforced conscription of a main character at about 80% into the book.Even Adichie's writing style seems to become more panoramic: at the start, it's vivid and immediate with very little exposition, and character being expressed via what people do and say. As the story proceeds, it becomes a bit more 'told' - though I like the fact that there is no omniscient narrator and we have a sense of contingency and reaction.Overall, this is undoubtedly both ambitious and also a personally important topic for Adichie herself - I liked it but just didn't love it as much as I wanted.

This collection of intertwined experiences is a poignant display of the realities of war from many sides. It captures the imagination, questions everything from gender to ethnicity to colonialism and stares courageously and fearlessly in the face of the West. I love the staunch, relentless counter to the western influence in Africa on every page, in every quote or thought or character's presence. I feel incredibly privileged and humbled to have been able to read this.

I read Half a Yellow Sun to gain a better understanding Africa’s issues.My knowledge of the Biafran famine and preceding war came from childhood awareness, then came Feed the World and Ethiopia in my teens. This powerful and wonderfully written story gave me greater and sympathetic awareness of the horrors. Though I know you cannot read one fictional account about such a traumatic subject and say you’ve a full and rounded understanding. No matter how engrossing.I gave it four stars instead of five, because as a piece of fiction it left me low, then again it's a hard subject.

Half of a Yellow Sun is good read which provides an insightful narrative on the Nigerian/Biafran War.I knew very little of the events that led to this war before reading the book, and I feel like this work of fiction brought so much life to an obviously very tumultuous and disturbing period in (what is now) Nigeria's history.Ugwu is an excellent character, and my favourite chapters were the one told through his eyes. Some other characters were not so likeable however, and I found myself frustrated with several of them as the story progressed.However, this story is undoubtably a moving one. The characters are wonderfully used to demonstrate how far the repercussions of war can spread, and to devastating effect.