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Half of a Yellow Sun | 
 enlarge | Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: Anchor
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $7.95
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Rating:  70 reviews
Sales Rank: 2977
Media: Paperback
Pages: 560
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 1400095204
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9781400095209
ASIN: 1400095204
Publication Date: September 4, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
With effortless grace, celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who has abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene. Half of a Yellow Sun is a tremendously evocative novel of the promise, hope, and disappointment of the Biafran war.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 65 more reviews...
 Compelling and Honest February 17, 2007
Pattee Fletcher (Maryland)
36 out of 37 found this review helpful
I could not put this book down! The story grabbed hold of me immediately and soon I was living in the lives of the main characters. There are many ways to look at this book: it is a love story; a history; about African culture; about starvation; a war story; a book about families and loyalty; it is about facing fatal horror and trying to find meaning; it is literature; and it is a keeper.
The plot cannot be condensed into one theme or story. It is about loving someone with whom you have real and painful differences, the heartache, companionship, and ultimately, acceptance of each other and of the love that you have. It is about how disparate members of a family cope with plenty and with poverty. It takes you into the war for Biafra and the details are harsh, stark, and they make you pause.
Adichie presents us with an honest story; there are no happy endings; many compromises. This is the beauty of the story - it is honest, real, lyrically relentless in depicting a point in time that was a shame of a nation; of a world.
Adichie's novel will haunt you and it will stand the test of time.
Stunning novel on a difficult subject August 5, 2007
ImpatientReader.com (the West)
16 out of 18 found this review helpful
[***** = breathtaking, **** = excellent, *** = good, ** = flawed, * = bad]
Two African Igbo sisters and their families get caught up in the Nigerian civil war of the 1960s which culminated in the attempt to form the Republic of Biafra. Don't worry if you shy away from dry historical tomes. This novel centers itself in the absorbing domestic tensions between the complex, three-dimensional characters: Ugwu, a perceptive young houseboy who works for the somewhat pompous revolutionary professor Odenigbo; Olanna, a beautiful woman who loves Odenigbo; Kainene, her plain but resourceful twin sister; and Richard, the white Englishman who's in love with Kainene. The viewpoints are Ugwu, Olanna, and Richard.
I liked almost everything about this story, but my favorite thing of all had to be the dialog. It seemed to perfectly convey the musical quality of both spoken Igbo and African-accented English. By that I mean that, though I've never heard Igbo and have rarely heard African-accented English, it got recreated in my mind as I listened to her characters chatting, bickering, joking, and saying very heartfelt things. This novel won the Orange Prize for fiction by women. Longer review on Impatientreader-dot-com.
BEAUTIFULLY RENDERED NOVEL July 9, 2008
Carl Palmer Odien
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
This beautifully rendered novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes to us in breathtaking details the polarizing 1960s of Nigeria. As with Purple Hibiscus Purple Hibiscus: A Novel Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie proves yet again that her voice is not one that is easily silenced. The centers around twin sisters, Olanna and Kainene, who, along with their family, get encompassed by civil war. All I really need to say is I couldn't put this book down! From the first sentence to long after I completed it, this book stayed with me. Some call this book a love story, others it's a fictional tale based on non-fictional events, but it really is about people enduring through some of the hardest times imagined. The honesty in the language, the way Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie created the dialog, all culminate to create this haunting tale. A+
History is people February 11, 2007
Friederike Knabe (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
Most of us will have little knowledge of the Biafra war, except, possibly, for the media's haunting images of starving children. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie brings her people's world to us in this beautifully crafted, deeply moving, novel. Set in Nigeria during the 1960s, the narrative alternates between the optimistic early years of the decade and the civil war period at the end of it. With her extraordinary storytelling skill, Adichie draws the reader into an absorbing account of fictionalized realities that is impossible to put down - or to forget after the last page is read. With this, her second novel, she confirms her international reputation, established first with Purple Hibiscus, as one of the leading new voices of African literature.
While the war for Biafra's independence, born out of highly complex Nigerian and international political circumstances, provides the essential context for the novel, Adichie's focus is on the personal and private, the struggle of the civilian Igbo population. Her depiction of the horrors of war, the starvation and destruction is realistic. Yet she does not allow these scenes to take over and succeeds in not overwhelming the reader with them. By concentrating on one family and its close circle of friends and neighbours, Adichie creates an intimate portrait of these people's lives during both these critical periods. She paints her characters and their ongoing interactions against the panoramic view of events and environments that influence their lives and challenges their peace and even their existence.
Central to her story are the twin sisters, Olanna and Kainene, from a wealthy middleclass Igbo family. The beautiful Olanna leaves Lagos for a university environment to be with her political firebrand lover, the math professor Odenigbo. Kainene, on the other hand, having inherited their father's talents, shines as a confident business woman. English researcher and writer, Richard, friend of Odenigbo, falls under her spell. Adichie explores the interactions sisterly intimacy and love as well as its serious tests with sensitivity and empathy for both. Through them and their surroundings she also touches on the social, political and religious tensions of the time.
The list of main characters wouldn't be complete without Ugwu. Brought into the Odenigbo household as a house boy, he matures from the naive village boy to become a well educated, articulate and caring member of the extended family. In fact, Ugwu acts as a sort of understudy to the narrator, adding a very distinctly personal flair to the description of events and bridging the reality of his own family's rural environment with that of the intellectually stimulating social gatherings at the professor's house.
During the war years, intimacies, friendships and loyalties are put to the test. Will they survive the dramatically changed circumstances that the group finds itself in? Some are evicted from their homes and have to join the endless stream of refugees to find shelter and food for survival. Others move into remote rural areas to escape the fighting. Olanna's efforts to maintain her dignity and to protect her small family come alive on the page. So does Kainene's work with her confidence that she can beat adversity and barriers in her efforts to maintain the supplies for a refugee camp. They don't lose hope or humanity. Odenigbo and Richard have their own demons to tackle. And Ugwu juggles his various roles while attempting to maintain something of a private life for himself.
Half of a Yellow Sun, also the symbol of the short-lived Biafran state, represents some of the best that storytelling has to offer. With strong imagery and beautiful language Adichie has created a masterwork. [Friederike Knabe]
But it is luminous like a full moon October 1, 2006
Yesh Prabhu, author of The Beech Tree (Plainsboro, New Jersey)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Every novelist has a unique story simmering in her (his) head, a story that she feels she must write; Arundhati Roy had "The God of Small Things", V. S. Naipaul had "A House for Mr. Biswas", and Chimamanda Adichie had "Half of a Yellow Sun". "This is a book I had to write," Ms. Adichie has said. "I have been thinking about this book my whole life."
When a writer thinks of a story for years, and then sets out to write it with care and passion, the prose flows as heartfelt, and the novel shines. As a result, long after you finish reading this novel, you will feel your mind lit with the light of this powerful, frightening and also deeply moving novel. Written in simple but elegant prose, her style reminded me of the great Indian writer R. K. Narayan: "He looked up at the ceiling, so high up, so piercingly white. He closed his eyes and tried to reimagine this spacious room with the alien furniture, but he couldn't. He opened his eyes, overcome by a new wonder, and looked around to make sure it was all real. To think that he would sit on these sofas, polish this slippery-smooth floor, wash these gauzy curtains."
And like R. K. Narayan, who was well-known for his short stories, Chimamanda also has written short stories as well. (She has been compared with Chinua Achebe, but I haven't read any of Achebe's novels.)
In Nigeria, in the late 1960s, there was a civil war between the Muslims in the north and Christians in the south, in the state of Biafra. Ethnic cleansing and massacre of Biafrans followed. As a result, Biafrans tried to secede from Nigeria. The half of a yellow sun refers to the emblem of the flag of the state of Biafra. Using this war as the background, the author has written a story involving five central characters: Ugwu, aged 13, who arrives at professor Odenigbo's house to work as a houseboy, and Olanna, a beautiful young woman who chooses to become Odenigbo's mistress, and Olanna's not so lovely twin sister Kainene, who is in love with Richard, an Englishman. Because other reviewers have narrated the story in brief, I do not feel the need to narrate it again.
There are beautiful, subtly erotic passages, as well as graphic passages depicting sex and violence and blood-curdling brutality. I have no doubt that similar incidents, as depicted here, did indeed occur in Biafra. But you need to have an iron stomach to be able to read these passages without feeling sick and fearful.
I wish to conclude on a cheerful note however, because I really admired this novel, and so here is a passage I wish to quote. Even though it is slightly erotic, I found it quite lovely: "But he liked going on errands to her house. They were opportunities to find her bent over, fanning the firewood or chopping ugu leaves for her mother's soup pot, or just sitting outside looking after her younger siblings, her wrapper hanging low enough for him to see the tops of her breasts."
This is truly a memorable novel; but it's not for the weak-hearted. It's even more impressive and more accomplished than her critically acclaimed first novel, Purple Hibiscus. "Half of a Yellow Sun" is an apt title, perhaps; but the novel is luminous like a full moon.
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