Book Review | Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimanda Ngozi Adichie

Rating
4 stars – a heartbreaking yet heartwarming insight into Africa at war

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimanda Ngozi Adichie set in 1960s Nigeria and follows the lives of a number of different characters as they are engulfed in the shocking horror of war.

I’d heard fantastic things about this novel, and after seeing an interview with Ngozi Adichie was really looking forward to reading it. I imagined it to be similar in vein to The Kite Runner, and I suppose it is in some aspects, though I found this to be a much tougher read.

The novel starts out with young Ugwu, a poor village boy who becomes a house boy for a university professor. Olanna is the beautiful young woman who abandons her priviledged life to move in with the professor. Richard is the charasmatic englishman who falls in love with Olanna’s twin sister.

Throughout the novel Ngozi Adichie moves the stories back and forth through time as the character’s paths cross and war breaks out in Africa.

I found the book quite hard going at times; I certainly didn’t get as caught up in the story as I did with Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns. But that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it. I can see why this novel has received such acclaim, it is beautifully written and the author is a skilled story teller. The images of war were at times shocking and heart breaking, but the story itself was endearing.

If you are interested in learning more about the war in Africa in the 1960s, or just want to read a beautifully written book, then I recommend you give Half of a Yellow Sun a try.

Half of a Yellow Sun