Half of a Yellow Sun

If I hadn't already read The Dollmaker in March then Half Of A Yellow Sun would certainly have been my Book Of The Month. Adichie's exploration of events leading up to and during the late 1960s civil war in Nigeria is a powerful indictment of irresponsible colonialism and also an emotionally moving historical novel. We see Nigeria and, for its brief existence, Biafra, through several eyes which enables Adichie to give a rounded portrayal of the disastrous attempt at independence. Already knowing how this battle will turn out means the whole of Half Of A Yellow Sun is tinged with poignancy, but I still found myself caught up in the excitement and self-belief of the Igbo people as they started to fight back against persecution.

I loved that our leading characters are such complicated people and their interconnected relationships allows us to see their actions from different perspectives. Twins are an important motif to Adichie and here the two sisters Olanna and Kainene have very different views on the best way to navigate their lives and I liked the brittle connection between them. Innocent Ugwe perhaps has the most difficult journey from village ignorance to political awareness. As readers, we learn alongside him, seeing as he does the many facets of Nigerian society that, repressed under British rule, now independence has come to the country are all asserting themselves. As an English woman I found myself again angry at my country for its behaviour.

Graphic descriptions of poverty, starvation and violence are frequently difficult to read and Half Of A Yellow Sun is not a novel for the faint-hearted. It shows the worst of humanity, but also the best. We understand how a people can be led to absolute disaster by carefully manipulated nationalist propaganda, how weak some individuals will be at such a time, how greedy and power-hungry, and also how strong and selfless. I believe this story of fifty years ago carries a powerful lesson for right now. Splintering along cultural or religious lines and allowing ourselves to be ruled by fear and hate will only result in Biafra being repeated again and again and again all over the world.

This is one of those books that has been on my ‘to read’ stack for a long time. Immediately after finishing it, every other book Adichie has written has been added to my stack.

This is an extraordinary book told from the perspective of three different characters. These are richly imagined characters that come to life from the very first sentence.

The multiple interwoven stories are deftly handled. While the storylines are complex, the form a coherent hold. Somehow Adichie managed this while avoiding a neat and tidy ending. This book shows that avoiding this type can have more of an impact than a “satisfying” resolution.

But more than anything, this book shows the reality of war: the impact it has on the lives of ordinary people, the shame it induces and the acts of everyday heroism it takes to survive. It also shows how easily our comfortable lives can be taken away and replaced with a life where finding the next meal is a challenge.

This book is the reason I read. This is the type of book that I hope to find but rarely do; the kind of book that changes the way you see the world and changes you.

If you're struggling to get through the first 1/4 of this book, let me encourage you: It's actually about the Nigerian civil war and the secession of Biafra, and things start happening! Just keep going! I almost gave up before I got to the point where the revolution began, because almost 150 pages at the beginning are spent setting up the characters and describing Nigerian life in the early 1960s, and it's quite dull. There's very little plot movement. But I was encouraged to keep going because a friend was further along in the same book and really enjoying it, and I'm glad I did.

The title of Richard's book, "The World Was Silent When We Died," is apropos. As an American born after the events in the book, I knew nothing about this period of Nigerian history, and it serves as a reminder of the many tragedies playing out around the world, even today, about which we are unaware or uninterested. In the Afterword, the author includes a list of further reading on Biafra, into which I am now tempted to delve further. (Incidentally, did you know that the humanitarian crisis caused by the Nigerian blockade of Biafra was what spurred the creation of Doctors Without Borders?)

I read "Americanah" (by the same author) last year, and found this book much more compelling. The writing is lyrical and beautiful, and she does a wonderful job of conveying the experience of living through a civil war and of helping non-Nigerians understand the racial and tribal divisions among the populations, and the effect of British colonialism, that led to the conflict. The characters are sympathetic and realistic, and I loved watching them change as national events put them into situations they never anticipated, and throws the concerns of their prior lives into perspective. Be sure and read the brief Afterword, which explains the author's personal connection to the real-world events.