Magic. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born 1977) seemed to possess a magic wand that she was able to weave a story that was not supposed to be interesting for me: an Asian who have not been to Africa except seeing parts of that continent in the movies and reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Adichie turned an “uninteresting” story that speaks lucidly, bravely and beautifully about that tumultuous event that happened in her country Nigeria during the latter part of the 60’s when she was not even More...

I read only about one-third of this novel. Adichie's (CNA) writing doesn't agree with me at all. And the characters are so flat they should be able to slide under a door trouble-free. The characters don't even bother to play their role with its limited definition. Instead they keep pounding their fists on a table and shouting out what their role is supposed to be: "I am a sardonic bitch.", "I am sooo non-racist you won't even believe it", "blah blah".

Ouch! My head hurts.

One type of characters I More...

She did it again. And she did it (again) masterfully! While reading this novel I was often thinking of García Márquez’s words: ”The worst enemy of politicians is a writer” and I would amplify that with not only of politicians. Now, I’m not sure if Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has had intention to accuse (probably not) but you cannot avoid truth and, as always truth is hurting so badly.

Half of a Yellow Sun (related with Biafran flag, look the photo) is a story about birth and short life of Biafra, li More...

Sumpah! Sebelum membaca novel ini, saya tidak tahu bahwa ada negara Biafra di peta dunia. Bahkan nama Biafra pun baru pertama kali ini saya dengar. Republik kecil ini terletak di sebelah tenggara Nigeria. Tetapi itu dahulu. Kalau Anda mencarinya di peta bumi sekarang, sampai lebaran monyet pun tak akan bakal Anda temukan tanah air orang-orang Igbo itu. Sebab, Republik Biafra hanya berumur 3 tahun saja (30 Mei 1967 – 15 Januari 1970). Kini, Biafra kembali ke sejarah asalnya, menjadi bagian dari R More...

I'm getting into a bad habit with not finishing books, but I found this book really challenging and it didn't interest me enough for it to be an enjoyable challenge; it was just a chore. I'm not familiar at all with African politics, and I don't think Adichie really had that sort of audience in mind when writing 'Half of a Yellow Sun' - again, perhaps if I had engaged with her characters on a more personal level, or found the narrative more interesting, then this would have been a great opportun More...

"May we always remember." This is how Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ends her author's note at the back of this book about the Nigeria-Biafra war 1967-70. But the thing is - I didn't know about this war before reading this novel. In fact - I had never even heard of Biafra before...

So this novel did what I love when fiction do - it captured me by it's story while at the same time I learned something new. And even though Adichie didn't dive into the blood and gore of war, she manage to paint a pretty gr More...

This is the powerful true story of the tragic civil war in Nigeria between 1967 and 1970, and the creation and defeat of Biafra. Nigeria itself is a fairly modern creation, like most African countries, its borders formed by its colonisers. And like Rwanda, differences between tribes were encouraged and fostered by the colonisers until they reached a peak of hate and murder. I didn't know this about Nigeria. I knew, from reading Say You’re One of Them and Little Bee that persecution and strife er More...

The Biafran civil war, a terrible blot on Nigerian history and humanity, has not surprisingly, found voice in almost all major literary works produced in the country so far. Adichie was not born when the war happened but says that she grew up in its shadows and could never forget how she lost several of her family members to a situation, which was entirely man-made. This naturally, allows the author to recount incidents with unusual fervour, giving graphic images of the horrors that descended on More...

This novel is rich, beautifully written, wonderful in its scope and quite impossible to put down. I have formulated a wealth of bullet points about the story and its characters.

- Adichie sets the scene incredibly well from the outset. I love her descriptions - the bungalows which are 'painted the colour of the sky', for example.
- I really like the way in which she deftly weaves Igbo words into the text to further cement the story and give it a real sense of place and character.
- I felt that she More...

Okay, so if I got to pick how I learn my world history of civilized cultures, I would pick to have this author, or a fair equivalent, write this kind of heartfelt bio of the defining struggles in their generation.

I bought this because I had heard this woman interviewed months before when it came out in hardcover. The interview intrigued me - the author spoke about how she was able to write from the perspective of a young boy (I think he is 12 when we start).
The book is really about the short- More...

Set in Nigeria in the 1960s, Half of a Yellow Sun tells the story of estranged twin sisters, Olanna and Kainene, as rising ethnic and nationalist tensions culminate in the Biafran secession and subsequent war. It's a fascinating and powerful book on many levels, detailing a conflict which the majority of people in the west are shamefully ignorant of; and yet I'm of two minds about it.

I liked the clarity of Adichie's prose, the intelligence and observation with which she writes, and was really f More...

oh wow wow wow - what a book !! definitely a new favourite author !!

it is quite grim, and it was hard reading this, while i'm also reading 'winter of the world', so i need a lighter book now - but i'm so glad i read this book. she describes the characters so well. i usually don't see the faces of the characters when i read. the only other author who describes characters where i see their faces is ken follett. so to come close to ken follett, who is my favourite author, is an accomplishment. ;) More...

Excellent -- substantial and compulsively readable. The characters were like people! I felt I knew them by the end. And I liked how people did bad things and they -- and the people around them -- had to struggle to come to terms with those things; they weren't just smote by some plot twist reserved for evildoers. It felt real.

I feel like I should say more, but don't have anything useful to say! It was just really impressive. An enormously kind book, despite the brutality it portrays.

WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS BOOK IF YOU EVER WANT TO FIND ANOTHER BOOK SATISFYING.

Adichie makes enormous strides in her second novel. While her first displayed exceptional writing, this one incorporates a great deal more complexity in characters - both quality and the quantity, and conflict - political and domestic.

The novel is set during the Nigerian-Biafran wars in the 1960s. It begins during a time of relative peace and the reader gets to witness the call for revolution at the home of Odenigb More...

Something of a disappointment

It is not often that a novel comes to hand that has been prized, praised and pre-inflated. Half of a Yellow Sun was in that category when I opened it and began to read. And I was captivated immediately. I read the first hundred pages at a pace, delighting in the ease with which the Chimanada Ngozi Adichie used language to draw me into the middle-class clique centred on the University of Nsukka which provides the core characters of her book. Their infidelities, their More...

This book is good, flow easily from page 1 and was like a smooth glass of perfumed white wine after a whole load of harsh throat grabbers BUT I had a few problems with it that left me feeling troubled:

1. Some of the characters were actually caricatures, Richard was hardly believable as a real person and the basis for his character as described by her in a Radio 4 interview recently (based in part on Frederick Forsyth??!!) belies the character she presents us - misplaced, impotent, well meaning, More...

I was captivated by this story. I thought Adichie very convincingly portrayed the complex relationships between the characters, and also impressively (given she was born after the Biafran war) wove the historical context into the story. It was touching and devastating. I think I liked the first two thirds or so better than the last - I don't know if it dragged on a bit at the end or it started to lose its cohesiveness - and the inappropriately abrupt ending left me unsatisfied with how it ultima More...

DIO NON FALLIRÀ?
Hanno abolito le province italiane (ma è successo davvero?) e molti hanno protestato, si sono appellati alle grandi differenze tra Pisa e Livorno, o tra Savona e Imperia.

Nel caso dell’Africa, continente non provincia e caso mai colonia, l’unica differenza che sembriamo in grado di fare è tra Africa del nord e Africa nera o subsahariana.
Per il resto, è una massa unica, è l’Africa e non gli infiniti paesi e popoli che la compongono.

Questo libro racconta una delle millanta storie d More...

Mar 21/13:
A slow start. Some of the characters are flat and/or irritating.
Richard is such a wimp. I have to wonder what he's doing in the story but I guess time will tell.
There's a lot of parties with drinking & political talk, which so far isn't going anywhere.
The war is just starting. Maybe things will pick up?

Mar 24:
I finished today and haven't changed my mind. I feel kind of sad about that because this is an important part of history and one that shouldn't be forgotten.
As I was read More...

I think we’ve all grown up seeing images of starving children in Africa. But until a few months ago I knew none of the details of Nigeria’s Biafran War and the starvation that went along with it. Half a Yellow Sun, however, is not a history of the atrocities of this particular war. It is an intricately woven novel about five people—twin sisters, their lovers (one an Igbo-speaking Englishman, the other a fiery hearted professor with revolutionary ideals for his country), and a young Igbo houseboy More...

Excerpted from the full review:

"Half of a Yellow Sun is a meeting place for stories, told by three vastly different, irrevocably connected characters. Ugwu, a precocious boy from an impoverished village, is sent to tend house for the eccentric, eloquent Odenigbo, a lecturer at Nigeria’s Nsukka University. Overcome by the incredible improvement in his living situation, Ugwu becomes quickly devoted to pleasing his ‘Master’, as he insists on referring to the enigmatic lecturer and fervent anti-esta More...

An extremely powerful book. No stylistic hi-jinks; instead Adichie uses a clear, lucid narrative voice that rarely draws attention to itself. Vivid and memorable portraits of characters, both central and peripheral. An epic narrative that tells the tale of the Biafran secession and its tragic end through the lives of a handful of characters. Adichie does not lose track of the larger story while focusing on her protagonists, nor does she merely manipulate hollow-man characters who are subservient More...

This is a recent winner of the Orange Prize, and deservedly so.

Adichie's wonderful narrative skills are showcased in this book, in which she relates the post-colonial horrors in Nigeria, which, like most African nations, is comprised of many different regions, which co-exist within artificial boundaries drawn by the European powers that formerly controlled the area. In drawing these boundaries, little concern was shown for the historic African boundaries or population groups. This book, like "T More...

This is one of the best book i ever read and the first Novel i read a bout Africa.The writer engaged me to be a seeker of truth, and reality while I enjoy a magnificence piece of art. When I read I just feel the music of her smooth language touch my ears and spread pleasure everywhere. i loved even her speeches as she was taking about the relationship between love and war .


“I wrote this novel because I wanted to write about love and war, and in particular because I grew up in the shadow of Bia More...

This novel is a love story set in the backdrop of the Biafran civil war in Nigeria in the late 1960's. The main characters are a pair of twin sisters who are well-connected and from the upper strata of Nigerian society belonging to the Igbo tribe. The author takes us through their love life - Olanna with her Igbo left-wing revolutionary academic Odenigbo and her twin Kainene with her white English journalist and aspiring author Richard. As the story unfolds, you get an idea of the liberal sexual More...

I really liked this book, but even though the writing is superb and the author crafts a good story, I did not love it. The main reason is that I usually enjoy historical fiction books, but in this instance, I remember this era and the news coming out of Biafra/Nigeria, especially the news of the starving children with the huge bellies. (A close friend of mine endlessly collected money for this cause, to which I generously donated. Turns out the food the money was to provide probably never did ge More...

I am currently reading Half Of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Half Of A Yellow Sun
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Fiction
435 pages

With her award-winning debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was heralded by the Washington Post Book World as the “21st century daughter” of Chinua Achebe. Now, in her masterly, haunting new novel, she recreates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria during the 1960s More...

Shoot I lost my new review. This book did not impress me, I thought. But it kept playing in my mind. I had to go back and re-read the skipped pages. The story of a birth of a nation ,that was eventually starved into submission. Ethnic cleansing, corrupt government and apathy from the world community was a contributing factor also. Biafra was a fledgling country trying to come of age in Africa in the 60's and 70's. This book shoves us into the horror and violence of the time. It will stay with me More...

This is a book about the Nigerian-Biafran war that took is a civil war among the Igbo people attempting to break away from Nigeria. There were many cultural clashes set up, in large part, because of Britain's interjection into how things should go.

The story follows two sisters' lives: Olanna and her twin Kainene. We take the journey both of them take as they work their way through love, politics and losses that are unimaginable.

An amazing glimpse of the residual effects of colonization.

een heel mooi en boeiend boek! geschreven in een lome, Afrikaanse sfeer, een traag tempo en een gevoelvolle stijl. Het begint met het alledaagse leven, familieverhoudingen en relatie-perikelen tot de Biafra-oorlog (1967-1970) begint. De gruwelen van oorlog en bombardementen, hongersnood en verkrachtingen worden weliswaar realistisch beschreven, maar op een manier die het mogelijk maakt om door te blijven lezen. Een aanrader!