Half of a Yellow Sun (Paperback)

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Half of a Yellow Sun By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Cover Image
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Staff Reviews


Simply put.... This is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read! — Liz Barnum

In her second powerful novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, has created an intimate view of what happens to a small circle of intellectuals, business owners, and their house servants, during the 1960s struggle for Biafran Independence. Adichie profoundly captures the shape of love and alliances, shifting hope and crushing grief in this intelligent drama based on her homeland's recent history. Readers of this book should expect to come away changed, for the backdrop of colonialism, ethnic rivalry, corrupt power and political manipulation by outsiders seems terribly relevant to current international affairs today. Adichie not only accomplishes a marvelous fictional portrayal of tragedy in war, but also left this reader seeing every current image of war abroad as a window into the real personal stories that are happening there - the human drama of what happens to friendships and families when neighborhoods are suddenly turned to battlefields. — Nancy Scheemaker

Adichie explains Biafran struggle for independence through the eyes of three very different characters: an educated Nigerian woman, a young house boy, and an English journalist. For someone who had little to no knowledge of the subject, this was the perfect approach. The conflict intertwines with their personal stories - their romances, desires and ambitions - so that their once separate tendrils braid together creating one front united in survival. One of those rare novels I can’t imagine anyone disliking. Highly recommend! — Amelia Stymacks

Fall '08/Winter '09 Reading Group List


“This powerful and dramatic story is set in Nigeria in the 1960s, against the hopes and disappointment of the struggle for a Biafran republic. Adichie balances the political turmoil with three compelling point-of-view characters. Lushly written and emotionally haunting, this book contributes new faces to our understanding of the human costs of race, class, and ethnic struggles in our world.”
— Elli Meeropol, Odyssey Bookshop, South Hadley, MA

Description


NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • From the award-winning, bestselling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists—a haunting story of love and war. • Recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Winner of Winners” award.

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.

About the Author


CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, Financial Times, and Zoetrope: All-Story. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Half of a Yellow Sun, which was the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Winner of Winners” award; Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck; and the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, both national bestsellers. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.

Praise For…


A New York Times Notable Book and a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

“A gorgeous, pitiless account of love, violence and betrayal during the Biafran war.” —Time

“Instantly enthralling. . . . Vivid. . . . Powerful . . . A story whose characters live in a changing wartime atmosphere, doing their best to keep that atmosphere at bay.” —The New York Times

“Ingenious. . . . [With] searching insight, compassion and an unexpected yet utterly appropriate touch of wit, Adichie has created an extraordinary book.” —Los Angeles Times

“Brilliant. . . . Adichie entwines love and politics to a degree rarely achieved by novelists. . . . That is what great fiction does–it simultaneously devours and ennobles, and in its freely acknowledged invention comes to be truer than the facts upon which it is built.” —Elle


Product Details
ISBN: 9781400095209
ISBN-10: 1400095204
Publisher: Vintage
Publication Date: September 4th, 2007
Pages: 560
Language: English