Half of a Yellow Sun

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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.

About the author

Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a writer and storyteller, best known for her themes of politics, culture, race, and gender. Her novels, short stories, and plays…
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Half of a Yellow Sun takes place in Nigeria in the 1960s. The book begins when Ugwu, an Igbo boy from a bush village, goes to Nsukka to work as a houseboy for Odenigbo, a professor and radical. Odenigbo is in love with Olanna, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Nigerian. Olanna moves in with Odenigbo and meets his friends, who argue about politics every night. Ugwu becomes an excellent cook and goes to school. Meanwhile Richard, a white Englishman in Nigeria, leaves his girlfriend Susan when he falls in love with Kainene, Olanna’s sardonic twin sister. Richard moves to Nsukka and befriends Odenigbo and Olanna. Odenigbo’s mother “Mama” visits and calls Olanna a witch, which upsets her greatly. Olanna and Odenigbo start trying to have a child.

The narrative jumps a few years ahead, when the Nigerian government is overthrown. The Northern Hausa blame the Igbo for the coup. There is then another coup, and this time many Igbo soldiers are killed. Olanna now has a child she calls “Baby,” and she takes her to Kano to visit her relatives. The violence against the Igbo becomes a pogrom, and Olanna’s relatives are brutally murdered. She escapes on a train to Nsukka and sees a woman carrying her daughter’s severed head in a basket. Meanwhile Richard watches Igbo civilians being murdered at the airport. Colonel Ojukwu, the Igbo leader, announces that Southeast Nigeria will secede and become the Republic of Biafra. All the characters are overjoyed at this.

Nigeria then declares war on Biafra to annex it. Britain and Russia supply arms to the Nigerians, who advance against the confident Biafrans. Nsukka is evacuated, and Olanna, Odenigbo, Ugwu, and Baby move to the cities of Abba and then Umuahia. Their living situations get progressively worse as the war continues and Biafra’s food and money runs out. Odenigbo and Olanna get married, but there is an air raid during the reception. The narrative is sometimes interrupted by a book called The World Was Silent When We Died, where an unknown author describes the larger political forces at work in the war.

The story returns to the early sixties, to the time before the war. Olanna goes to London, and while she is away Mama visits Odenigbo with a girl named Amala. Odenigbo sleeps with Amala, and when Olanna returns home she finds out. She moves out and gets very depressed. Olanna learns that Amala is pregnant with Odenigbo’s child. She gets drunk one night and seduces Richard. Richard and Olanna both agree not to tell Kainene, though Olanna soon tells Odenigbo.

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