Half of a Yellow Sun in Booklist Queen Reading Challenge

Apr 07, 2011 Sally906 rated it it was amazing

Shelves: general-fiction, african, nigerian, favorites

At the time of the 1960 Nigerian independence from Great Britain, the country had a federal constitution comprised of three regions defined by the three principal ethnic groups in the country. The first region was the Muslim Hausa/Fulani semi-autonomous feudal states in the north. The second was the principally animist kingdom of Yoruba in the south-west; and the Christian Igbo were the third group in the south-east. As the British withdrew, the barely suppressed ethnic tensions broke out. In 19 At the time of the 1960 Nigerian independence from Great Britain, the country had a federal constitution comprised of three regions defined by the three principal ethnic groups in the country. The first region was the Muslim Hausa/Fulani semi-autonomous feudal states in the north. The second was the principally animist kingdom of Yoruba in the south-west; and the Christian Igbo were the third group in the south-east. As the British withdrew, the barely suppressed ethnic tensions broke out. In 1966 some 30,000 Igbos were massacred by Hausas, as reprisal following an ill-fated coup in the Nigerian Government by Igbo military. Over one million refugees fled to their Igbo homeland in the east, and in May 1967, the Igbo region formally seceded from Nigeria and the Independent Republic of Biafra was born. Nigeria responded with military force, and a bloody civil war ensued. The Nigerian forces, backed by Britain and the USA, gradually advanced. By 1969 the Biafran people were cut off from the sea and surrounded by Nigerian troops. At this point Nigeria closed the borders, all supplies into Biafra were severely restricted. Starvation gradually defeated the Biafrans. In January 1970, the short-lived Biafran nation fell and was re-incorporated into Nigeria. It is believed that over one million people died of starvation during the war.

It is with this heartbreaking civil war in the background that Nigerian Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie sets her second novel, HALF A YELLOW SUN. The whole conflict is seen through the eyes of three characters. The first is Ugwu, a peasant houseboy who comes to work for a professor with revolutionary ideas. The second character is Olanna, an educated, wealthy Nigerian woman who becomes the mistress of the professor. Finally, there is Richard, a white man who is in Nigeria to research Igbo art, but is drawn into the conflict through his love for Olanna’s sister. It is through these three narrators that the reader experiences lives being turned upside down by ideals and war. You see how they go from a comfortable existence to a life where everything familiar is taken away. Rape, torture, murder and the fight for survival destroys the last vestiges of civility. The characters come alive for the reader, just leaping out of the pages straight into your heart. This is an emotional, and horrific, period of world history. Adichie is able to let the reader see the horrors without letting you drown in them. Even at the very worst part of the ordeal she is able to inject a little humour to show that all the spirit is not destroyed. This book made me laugh, it made me cry, and it made me angry that humans are able to do this to each other. Don’t be put off by the politics; they are in the background only. The real story is the survival by those whose lives are influenced by politics without fully understanding the nuances of political motives. The story is about uselessness, despair, love, standing up for what is right. It is about relationships, as well as what makes innocent people turn into war criminals. It is a book you must read.
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Feb 06, 2015 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, literary-schmiterary, 1001-books, all-time-favorites, 100-best-of-21st-c

I feel like this book has changed me some how. I'm not sure how. I mean, it's not possible to have travelled through this universe of sun, cashew trees, jollof rice, confusion, chin-chin, hope, idealism, garri, war, starvation, refuge camps, and red dusty roads, and not emerge on the other end without having been changed in some ways. Ms Adiche's writing is so natural, so seemingly effortless, that I would fall right in, as if falling into a pool and sinking to the bottom; but I never felt the s I feel like this book has changed me some how. I'm not sure how. I mean, it's not possible to have travelled through this universe of sun, cashew trees, jollof rice, confusion, chin-chin, hope, idealism, garri, war, starvation, refuge camps, and red dusty roads, and not emerge on the other end without having been changed in some ways. Ms Adiche's writing is so natural, so seemingly effortless, that I would fall right in, as if falling into a pool and sinking to the bottom; but I never felt the sensation, and when I set the book down, stood up, walked to the bathroom or answered the phone ... I would be startled to find myself at my desk, in a world with electricity and plenty of food and no war planes overhead.

I don't want to make this sound like a war story. It's not. It is the story of people, and they happened to live during war time and so yes parts of it are the story of the Biafran War.

Each chapter alternates between three main characters: Ugwu, Olanna, and Richard. I'll let the book blurb describe each of these people, since it does it better than I could. Ugwu and Richard were fine, but the character that really resonated with me was Olanna. I don't know if that's because Ms Adiche is a young Nigerian woman also, or if its because I am a woman, or something else entirely.

I found the occassional descriptions of another book being written to be distracting, but towards the end I understood better what the author was trying for with those.

During Ugwu's chapters, I often felt myself wondering, "is that really how someone like Ugwu would feel?" ... he comes across as a hopeless sychophant, and rather small-minded, and really rather unlikeable. Richard seemed far too spineless and unmoored and unknowable, and I often wondered why the author had included him at all (and I sometimes had the distinct impression that the author did not actually like the character she had created). But in Olanna's chapters, I really felt what she felt, I saw what she saw. (I loved the frequent appearances of her twin, the prickly Kainene, as well). That's not to say that I didn't enjoy Richard's chapters or Ugwu's chapters, I did. But I also felt myself to be at a remove from them, as if in the presence of "the Other," and never quite sure how to really feel, if they are being sincere or trustworthy.

I am not Nigerian, but the cadence of the Igbo pidgin is familiar to me, and it often came through crystal clear in the dialogue, and would make me smile. There is a saying, to describe a hangover, that I kept expecting one of the characters to say: my head, oh! my belly, oh!

And yes, this is a story of three different people during wartime, but the unifying theme throughout is not war, but belonging. Richard worries that he will never find a place or family to belong, he worries that Kainene thinks he doesn't belong, and he desperately wants to be part of Biafra from the beginning, so he will finally have a place to belong. Ugwu wants to belong to his Master and jealously guards him from interlopers. And Olanna spends the book searching for where to belong: so many options open to her, but she never feels she really belongs in Odenigbo's circle of intellectuals, and she doesn't realize that she is the glue that holds everyone together.

This book fulfills the "written by someone under 30" category of the 2015 Ultimate Reading Challenge. ...more

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Jul 13, 2020 Lindzie rated it really liked it

Really love how this author describes things. It was a lot for me with regards to the sex between characters and rape of this war. But this is a sensitive topic for me. I think she did an excellent job describing how a whole people suffered and lost everything they had known before a war broke out. I didn’t have any knowledge of this war and feel like i learned a lot

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