I’ve not been having the greatest luck with my TBR Pile Challenge this year. Oh, I’ve stayed on track and managed to read at least a book a month, but it feels like I haven’t fallen in love with any of the books in a while.
I did love The Book of Unknown Americans and The Mathematician’s Shiva and In Triumph’s Wake was a revelation…but there was also The Little Book, The Slap and The Grapes of Wrath debacle. The Custom of the Country was only so-so for me.
I really wanted a win.
And at first, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun seemed like it would end up in the disappointment column.
I’m happy to report that, after a rocky start, I loved Half of a Yellow Sun.
Half of a Yellow Sun tells the story of the Biafran War that took place from 1967-1970 and the people that were affected by it. Ugwu, a 13 year old when we first meet him, goes to work as the house-boy of a professor at Nsukka University, Odenigbo. Soon, Odenigbo’s girlfriend, Olanna comes to live with them. Olanna is the beautiful daughter of an Igbo chief, whose twin sister Kainene takes up with an English man, Richard. Richard, Olanna and Ugwu are our storytellers, but through them we keep up with Odenigbo’s revolutionary politics and Kainene’s business interests.
I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t know anything about the Biafran War. Reading Half of a Yellow Sun made me realize how little I knew about any African history, aside from anything that affected European politics. Adichie’s family lived through this war – her grandfathers didn’t survive it. The stories that she tells in this book are based on the experiences of real people.
When I first started reading this, I read in fits and starts; 10 pages here, 13 pages there. I loved Americanah so much – it grabbed me from the very first page – and I was afraid that this one just wasn’t going to live up to it.
But it did. Once I devoted some proper time to this book (and if you decide to read it, I would recommend that you have some time to really get into this one) I fell in love. Adichie’s vivid depictions of a people torn apart by war, of the lives that they led and then lost, of the ways that Ugwu, Olanna, Richard, Kainene and Odenigbo have to figure out how to survive in this new reality, of the love that they have for the idea of an independent Biafra, to be able to exist as an example of free African government, are intense.
This book taught me a lot – mostly about how much more I have to learn. I have a rabbit hole waiting for me right now on the actual history and politics of the Biafran War. If I wasn’t already a huge fan of Adichie’s, I would be now.
The Paperback Princess 